Beaches along the Esperance coast in Western Australia will be reinforcing their safety protocol, following recent drownings. Slippery rocks and strong waves are key factors making the beaches unsafe for tourists, especially at sites like Salmon Beach and Chapmans Point.
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00:00The impact is devastating and it's wide reaching. It's predominantly volunteers who respond
00:08to incidents like this. And so that affects them in a tragic way and reaches in, you know,
00:13ripples through the community, their families, friends, neighbours.
00:17And so how are you going to try to limit the number of deaths in future?
00:22So immediately we're rolling out new signage with internationally recognisable hazard symbols
00:28and some fencing.
00:30And so how much fencing will there be? As I understand it, you're kind of trialling
00:35it at one site?
00:37Yes, so Salmon Beach, which is potentially the most dangerous, we're going to have post
00:43and wire fencing at the beach, access to both headlands. And if that's successful in the
00:49coming months, then we'll also roll that out to the other two hazardous and, you know,
00:53very popular spots, Chapman's Point and the opposite of Twilight Beach, Picnic Cove, Dolphman Cove.
01:00And is it the headland? I think you can see these images that we're bringing up now.
01:04Is it the headlands at the ends of the beaches that are the most dangerous spots?
01:10Yes, it is, because the tourists arrive in the car park and then they walk off the beach
01:16up onto those rock headlands, yeah. So we're just hoping that the signage, the fence will
01:21corral you to the new signage and you can make an informed choice at that point whether
01:26or not you want to continue.
01:28And how much fencing will there be in this first trial? Like in terms of metres?
01:34Not very long at all. It's more about capturing you at the beach access, the entrance points
01:40and corralling you to the signage, so just a few metres.
01:42Yeah, so it's not going to be kind of too ugly in terms of a beautiful, natural feature?
01:47No, not at all. You couldn't possibly fence every single beach in Esperance. We're not
01:51attempting to do that yet.
01:54And yeah, so are you hopeful that this really will have an impact?
01:59We believe so. We were working with the Esperance Coastal Safety Group, made up of all the people
02:04who respond to these incidences, so their local knowledge and expertise, Department
02:08of Transport, SES, Marine Rescue, local police. So we've made an informed decision based on
02:15feedback from the locals with knowledge in this area.
02:19And how have you gone there with tourist numbers since COVID? Have they bounced back or they
02:24didn't fall off too badly?
02:25Oh, it's exponential, the growth post-COVID. I think we've been discovered by our own country
02:32because people couldn't leave the borders.
02:34Your secret's out.
02:35The secret's out. Esperance is no longer a hidden beauty. Everyone knows about it.
02:42And so how's the local community been handling that? Has it been good for local business?
02:48There are some people thinking it's maybe a bit too much or not?
02:52I think it's been amazing for local businesses, but we are struggling to keep up with just
02:57the sheer volume of visitors coming in such a short space of time. We don't have adequate
03:02infrastructure for that many people in such a short amount of time. So that's something
03:06we need to work on to smooth those peaks out across the year.
03:10And so how are you planning on doing that?
03:13So we're trying to provide more attractions throughout the year, putting events on in
03:17winter and the shoulder seasons, and also trying to encourage people to plan ahead to
03:22come at the off-peak time because it's beautiful 24-7 here in Esperance. You don't have to
03:28come only in summer.