Blowing the safety horn
WARNING systems should be used to avoid another death at Currumbin Creek, surfers say.
It follows a tiny advertisement on a surfing website reminding surfers to “look up and live” at the busy creek mouth. About 7000 vessels cross the bar each year, weaving between other boats and boardriders.
Surfrider Foundation’s Chris Butler said the council-paid advert, which he helped design, was only a start to educating people as the risk of death was still great.
“It is still an accident waiting to happen,” he said. “We had a death there in 2011 and the congestion is getting worse. At least the message is out there.”
Surfer Richard King, 42, died in the creek mouth in May 2011 after being struck by a boat.
Mr King was accidentally run over by an experienced skipper who was returning from fishing off Burleigh, a coroner’s report revealed.
The post-mortem examination found Mr King was hit in the head by the boat’s propeller.
In his recommendations coroner James McDougall said the existing risk was preferable to a ban for surfers and boaties and he supported ongoing and increased education.
“Adopting systems such as horns and/or flags should be explored further and pursued where feasible,” he wrote.
With dive operators at Byron Bay sounding their horn before travelling through crowds of surfers, Mr Butler said something similar should be applied to Currumbin Creek.
Mr Butler said it would be difficult to enforce a complete ban on either boats or surfers.
“It’s the only reliable access to the ocean rather than the two big rivers (Tweed and the Seaway) on the Gold Coast,” he said.
A spokesman for Mayor Tom Tate said the advert was a resolution of the World Surf Reserve Local Stewardship Committee.