Surf Life Saving NSW became interested in Emergency Response Beacons in 2018 when it piloted a beacon installation at Fingal Head in 2018 (not a Spectur beacon). In October 2019, SLS NSW was sufficiently keen on the potential of ERBs to announce that it would be purchasing and deploying ERBs at 35 coastal locations over the following 4 years under an Enhanced Rescue Funding Package. Over the following 17 months, there was little movement on the deployment of ERBs until in February 2021, Spectur announced that it had won a major contract with SLS NSW to supply ERBs for installation at high priority locations along the NSW coast, including replacement of antiquated technology provided by another company as part of earlier pilot programs.
Payment to Spectur for the ERB contract was made by SLS NSW upon delivery and while installation of ERBs then occurred sporadically during 2021, many Spectur ERBs sat in storage in SLS NSW facilities until such time as ERB siting arrangements with Councils and traditional landowners, as well as political announcement timetables could be reconciled. Compounding these issues was an apparent attitude in SLS NSW that the location of installed ERBs should not be revealed in case it encouraged people to swim in some of these high drowning incidence locations outside of flagged areas.
That all changed, firstly: in May 2022 when a Spectur beacon that had just been installed at Fingal Head to replace another company's antiquated beacon system was activated by a member of the public and proved instrumental in alerting SLS NSW to a potential drowning incident involving a rock fisherman who had sipped off a headland shelf into the ocean; and secondly: in November 2022 when again the Spectur beacon at Fingal Head was activated to alert SLS NSW to an incident in which two men appeared to be drowning in the rip beside the headland. Both incidents had good outcomes which were well reported by the media and by December 2022, SLS NSW seemed to take a change of tack and initiated a detailed web site coverage of the location and number of ERBs in NSW (20 installations as at December 2022).
Up until the NSW election in March 2023 and pretty much up until June of this year, further ERB installations along the NSW coast seemed to mostly remain caught up in red tape between SLS NSW, councils and traditional landowners although an ERB was installed at the Ruins in Booti Booti National Park in February 2023. However, the last 6 weeks has seen a flurry of ERB installation activity at 11 sites along the NSW coast, including: Belongil Beach, Brunswick Heads Breakwall, Suffolk Park, Lennox Head, Fingal Spit, Fingal Island, Budgewoi Beach, Pearl Beach, The Entrance Channel, Blackwood Beach and Potter Point.
SLS has now updated its list and number of ERB locations (32 locations currently listed) on its web site (scroll down to the list at the following link):
https://www.surflifesaving.com.au/emergency-response-beacons/. Curiously, it doesn't include two installations at Little Bay and Malabar Beach in Sydney, although I'm wondering if those installations occurred due to direct ERB purchases from Spectur by Randwick Council.
The most recent ERB installations occurred several days ago at Fingal Island and Fingal Spit near the mouth of Port Stephens and it is noteworthy that the new Labor Emergency Services Minister and Labor Member for Port Stephens were on hand to make the installations newsworthy.
By my reckoning, the original Spectur supply of ERBs to SLS NSW must have now all been installed, and with the NSW Labor Government having committed at the recent State election to a new $23 million funding round for surf life saving equipment including ERBs, it seems to be a reasonable deduction that in the near future we might expect a very material new contract between Spectur and SLS NSW for supply of another parcel of ERBs.
zeno9
