REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Friday October 8, 2004

CHINESE tourists were being charged $10 per head by their tour guides to set foot on Gold Coast beaches, it was revealed.

Police and Fair Trading officers said the unsuspecting tourists were being bullied into this disgraceful beach bite with the outrageous threat that if they did not pay up and then got into difficulties in the surf, lifeguards or lifesavers would not rescue them.

“And it gets worse, because we have been told that some of these Chinese tourists are being told they run the risk of been bashed by the lifeguards if they don’t pay the $10 fee,” said a police officer.

The news of the $10 fee shocked Gold Coast City Council’s chief lifeguard Warren Young, who said he was “astounded”.

“I didn’t know any of this happened, it’s just so appalling … we are there to help,” he said.

Queensland Surf Life Saving’s operations officer Peter Dawes labelled the scam “sinister”.

“It undermines everything our surf safety message is about,” he said.

“It devalues the Gold Coast beach experience. One of the great things about the service is that it is free. It is terrible it is being exploited by an unscrupulous group.”

The dodgy practice, labelled the worst yet by shonky tourist operators on the Gold Coast, was revealed during a major two-day, multi-agency operation on the Coast where more than 50 Asian tourist buses were targeted by police, Fair Trading and Immigration officers in Operation Charlie Jasmine.

Forty team members were involved.