President
In 2024/25 we kept our beaches safe
Why are we all here? To save lives.
We are a voluntary emergency service that keeps beachgoers safe at Woolamai Beach and Smiths Beach. We are also on call to other beaches along the coastline of Phillip Island and San Remo.
This season our Club’s members delivered over 10,000 voluntary patrol hours and over 26 of them achieved more than 100 voluntary patrol hours.
We performed more than 25 rescues, thousands of preventative actions, provided first aid and responded to call outs to other beaches throughout the season.
This season saw a changing of the guard with two new Club Captains -Jordan Kuerschner and Erin Close. We welcomed new patrol captains, vice captains and junior vice captains, new Bronzies and SRCs.
Our members responded to some difficult remote beach call outs again this season, some of which I witnessed first hand. I was very proud of the efforts of our members. These reinforce the importance of our efforts to promote beach safety and swimming between the flags at patrolled beaches.
This season, the Club took part in the development of the Bass Coast and Mornington Peninsula Cross Council Water Safety Framework -a collaborative effort between councils, emergency services, LSV and our Club to address drowning incidents and improve beach safety.
We have continued to work with LSV, Council and Phillip Island Nature Parks to promote and improve beach safety.
The fact that every visitor to our two patrolled beaches went home safely means that we have had a successful season.
We opened the doors to the local community
On the Grand Final public holiday - we held our inaugural community open day. Between 300-400 members of the local community visited the Club, took part in Clubhouse tours, watched life saving demonstrations, found out about Nippers and our courses and events and bought Club merchandise.
This was a great way to connect with our local community. Many people had never been in the Clubhouse before. We want this to become an annual event. A huge thanks to Fi Blackmore for co-ordinating and everyone who helped on the day.
We raised the funds to repair and upgrade the Smiths Beach Rescue Base.
Following a big fundraising campaign, we reached our target thanks to:
· Victorian Government Grants -Victorian Emergency Services Equipment Program & Tiny Towns
· Phillip Island Nature Parks
· Rotary Club of Phillip Island and San Remo
· Smiths Beachcombers Association
· The very generous community of Phillip Island and San Remo
Work on the Rescue Base tower will begin this winter with the staircase and landing to be replaced after summer.
A special thanks to Brendan Smart & Darrell Clark and others for their great work in helping turn this into a reality.
The Block helped us raise valuable funds
In October over 100 members of the Club and local community visited the Clubhouse, enjoyed food, drinks, live music and bid on donated auction items -in the process raising valuable funds for the Club.
A big thanks to Darrell Clark for organising the event, our musical director Glenn Davidson, our very own acoustic duo Emma Gallagher and Jordan Kuerschner and special guest musicians Daisy Spratt and Dan Seale, the San Remo Hotel for catering and our special guest celebrity auctioneers Dave Franklin and Block competitors Maddi, Charlotte and Hayden and Woolamai celebrity Nick Reynolds.
We promoted important beach safety messages through the media
The Club featured prominently in the media throughout 2024/25.
This included The Block; ABC News; WIN TV News; 3AW and extensive newspaper coverage.
Our Bronze camp was the focus of a terrific story on the ABC news which really captured the excitement of the camp and the passion and efforts of our training team, and provided an opportunity for some important water safety messages. Grace Murphy and Tommy Crow spoke on camera and in print and showed our future is in good hands.
We also uncovered some future media superstars with 5 of our young members Ava Close, Maddie Reynolds, Sophia Hungerford, Finlay Cameron and Kadek Humphris featuring in the opening ‘Baywatch’ sequence of the Block season finale.
Our training team delivered one of the biggest programs in the State
As well as keeping our beaches safe we are an organisation which trains life savers and leaders.
This season we welcomed a new Chief Instructor, Ellie Ryan and Director, Member Development, Phoebe Clark. They did an incredible job and led and motivated a fantastic training team.
4 Bronze courses, SRC courses, increased involvement of local schools, IRB camps and many other courses were high quality, well organised courses that were successfully delivered.
This makes Woolamai Beach SLSC one of the largest, if not the largest life saving training organisations in the State.
The Club also extended its partnerships with local schools, delivering courses for Newhaven College and Bass Coast College as well as our annual courses for Upwey High School and the Frank Dando Sporting Academy.
Ellie Ryan was this year’s winner of the President’s award for her extraordinary efforts. Ellie was also recognised with a special Valuing Volunteers Award by Life Saving Victoria.
Nippers keeps going from strength to strength
Our Nippers program was a huge success yet again nearly 400 children participating in the summer program at Cleeland Bight and Smiths Beach. This is where many of the life savers of the future get their start.
A huge thanks to our recently retired Nippers Director Julia Hay, and we are really looking forward to seeing the new direction that Heather Ridley will provide our program.
Another huge thanks to all of the Nippers Committee, junior age managers, age managers, assistants, water safety crew, first aiders, parent helpers and BBQ crew who worked so hard to deliver an amazing program.
Some sensational sunsets were enjoyed at the Clubhouse
One of the highlights of summer was Sunset Sips.
Every Friday evening from mid-December until the end of March we opened our Clubhouse bar to members and friends to unwind at the end of the week -at its peak attracting 50-60 visitors.
This provided a great opportunity to make the most of our amazing new bar and function room following our makeover by the Block TV show.
Led by Nick Reynolds and Jackson Sinclair, a huge thank you to everyone who made this possible by doing bar shifts, stocking the bar and promoting the event.
One of the real benefits was finding people coming along and putting up their hands to do things for the Club like cleaning windows, painting, fixing things. It was great to see some members of our wider community join as social members and help behind the bar.
We want to take it to the next level next season and start sharing our wonderful space with more members of our local community.
We continued our work to look after our local environment
A big thanks to Fi Blackmore, Louise Smith, Phillip Island Nature Parks and Coastcare for helping us continue to plant and weed the dunes surrounding our Clubhouse. This is extremely important to the long term survival of our Clubhouse in a harsh and unforgiving coastal environment.
You can play your part by coming to a planting day next season and staying off the dunes.
The Club is a member of the Phillip Island Nature Parks Community Environment Advisory Committee.
Our special events broke more records
Our special events continued to thrive and develop thanks to the amazing work of our crack events team led by Ron Nicholson, Mick Sullivan, Max Eldridge, Melina van Weerd Arceo and Graeme Burgan, with some great support this year from Michelle Murphy and Georgie Wettenhall and others.
We were thrilled with the community's support of our Club's programs and events again breaking records with a record field for the Channel Challenge and the Cowes Classic swim/run. The Channel Challenge sold out a week before the event for the first time ever. It’s a nice problem to have
We continued to raise awareness of important issues through our special patrols
Throughout the season we ran several special patrol weekends to raise awareness of important issues in our society. Blue Zinc Patrol raises awareness of Men’s Mental Health. Pink Zinc celebrates and recognises the contributions of our female members. Many of our members attended the annual Bass Pink Zinc Brunch at Cape Paterson. Rainbow Zinc is an all inclusive patrol which provides a safe and welcoming space for all members and shows our Club’s support of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Our Clubhouse received plenty of TLC
Darrell Clark and the Assets team did their usual amazing job upgrading and maintaining the Clubhouse.
A special mention to Troy Hungerford for all of his work co-ordinating electrical upgrades and to Nick Bartone for painting and re-tensioning balcony wires.
Darrell has big plans for some improvements over winter.
You can help by joining the Assets team, coming to working bees and looking after the place.
Club members were recognised with State awards at Life Saving Victoria’s Awards of Excellence
Bonnie Dickie was awarded the Victorian Educator of the Year.
The Club also received the Victorian Rescue of the Year - Forrest Caves
A number of Club members involved in Forrest Caves rescue effort received SLSA Awards of Merit for Bravery
Ellie Ryan, Riley Fyffe and Alan ‘AquaMole’ Hailes were also finalists and nominees for State awards.
Bobby’s back
This season we welcomed Bobby Bajram back to the Club as an official Club ambassador.
For those of you who don’t know Bobby, he is an extreme athlete who has suffered MS for over 40 years. Bobby has achieved feats many never thought possible and has climbed several of the world’s highest mountains and in 2027 is proposing to climb Mount Everest next year to raise awareness and funds for people with disabilities and their carers.
Bobby has trained with our Club several times this season, presented at our Blue Zinc dinner and was the official 2025 Channel Challenge race starter.
We look forward to continuing to help Bobby reach his goals.
We supported Disabled Surfing - Bass Coast
This season we established a relationship with Disabled Surfing Bass Coast and helped support two amazing days of surfing at Smiths Beach.
This is an incredibly rewarding experience which I can highly recommend. The smiles and excitement of helping someone catch a wave is something you will never forget. Sign up for next year.
Thanks everyone
I would like to express my gratitude to all members of the Club Board - Fi Blackmore; Nick Reynolds; Jordan Kuerschner, Erin Close, Emma Gallagher, Phoebe Clark, Darrell Clark, Jules Hay, Heather Ridley and Christian Born. You’ve all worked extremely hard over what has been a very long season.
I would like to single out Fi Blackmore our Vice President who this season has worn so many different hats - Vice President, Admin, Finance, helping with grants, running planting days & open days, patrolling, mentoring new Directors, working behind the bar, dealing with disciplinary matters and a whole lot more.
He’s not on the Board, he’s not even in the same country or time zone, but our UK correspondent, Brendan Smart just keeps on doing great work helping the Club obtain grants and funding.
Our Development Fund Board led by Neil Hannan and comprising members and advisers including Kevin Pidgeon, Georgie Wettenhall, Grant Edmunds, Andrew Crow, Bernd Neubauer and until recently the late Alan Lawry have done an excellent job in steering Club funds for the long term future of the Club.
I would like to thank everyone else who has made a contribution to the Club this season whether it has been patrolling on the beach, training others, doing admin work, applying for grants, looking after equipment, running special events and programs, looking after the wellbeing of our members.
I will again appeal for more off the beach help from our senior members and parents. We want to keep our young life savers on the beach and wanting to keep patrolling for years to come -not burning out.
Finally I would like to thank my wife Susan and daughters Erin and Ava for their support and all they do for the Club.
Jason Close