Bay watch

The season is all but over for Batemans Bay Surf Life Saving Club. The schools will break up next Friday for the autumn holidays, and the keener surfers from Canberra and elsewhere will come down to the coast for their last splash before winter.

About 30 rescues are carried out each year from the beach at Malua, many of them the result of unwary people being caught in the powerful rips. Today it's quiet, though guards with their boards and motor dinghy are standing by on the beach behind me should they be needed, and a couple of spotters are keeping an eye on things from the Radio Control Room deck in the clubhouse.

Some cleaning and maintenance work has been done this morning. The big oars left out to dry are used in such races as the gruelling George Bass Surfboat Marathon. This is possibly the toughest open-ocean race of its kind in the world and over seven days covers 190km of the NSW South Coast from Batemans Bay to Eden.

The main event for the volunteer lifeguards, though, remains rescue, and even in winter they keep themselves available for emergency call-outs, assisting the Coastal Patrol, Special Emergency Services and the police. A number of club members have received national awards for their heroic rescue work.