Clinton Heyworth from the Burnie Surf Life Saving Club explains how to stay safe around unpredictable rips. Video by Jess Flint.
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00:00 If we can sit up at the top of the beach there and just look out while we're up on the stands,
00:06 so we can look out and take notice of what's out in the water.
00:10 Look for objects, look for floating objects, look for where that water's moving so we can
00:15 see what's going on out there.
00:17 If we take that time at the start of the day, the waves aren't going anywhere, they're hanging
00:21 about.
00:22 So if we can take that five seconds, five minutes, whatever it might be, to observe
00:26 the water, observe the conditions, what we're looking for is the water running out.
00:30 That's the biggest clue.
00:32 So what you get is generally some dirty water coming out because the water has to go somewhere.
00:37 It's coming up as the waves crash up, it's got to travel out somewhere.
00:40 So it finds the lowest point on the beach.
00:42 So what you're looking for is, like what I've got over here, the sand's slowly coming out
00:47 and it's starting to create a rip.
00:49 Or we've got further up the beach, we've got the travelling rip which moves up and down.
00:53 So that's the tricky part about the Burnie Beach is that there is a travelling rip up
00:57 here because it's such a small beach.
00:59 We do have a constant or a regular one near the rocks here, but the travelling rip is
01:04 the trickiest one because it's moving up and down the beach all day.
01:08 Whoa!
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