Lifeguards on Bondi beach are usually running into the surf to rescue civilians in need. On Sunday evening, they were running out of it.
Two concurrent Christmas parties were taking place at the Bondi and North Bondi surf lifesaving clubs when shots rang out in Sydney’s east on Sunday, and dozens more lifesavers were stationed on the beach patrolling what had been a busy, sunny afternoon.
It’s a tradition for most surf clubs to have their Christmas parties on the second Sunday of December, and there was a celebratory mood in the air. Lots of children were around, a band was playing at North Bondi and buffets were being tucked in to.
The president of North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club, Steve Larnach, initially thought there’d been a shark attack when he saw “commotion out of the window”.
“That’s where your mind goes,” he says. “Then someone said ‘No – someone’s been shot.’ I looked around, and someone else already had a bandage ready to go.”
It was then that “pandemonium” hit. They still didn’t know the extent of what was happening, but the first priority for Larnach was to ensure people on the beach had shelter. They quickly opened up the doors to the club and ushered bystanders in.
“We were blocked [from view of the shooting], we couldn’t really see what was going on except for people running towards us,” he says.
In an extraordinary turn of events, lifesavers were the first responders on the scene – assisting victims of the shooting before emergency services or police had arrived.
At its peak, about 250 members of the public were packed into the North Bondi clubhouse, including half a dozen people who had been shot while celebrating Hanukah celebrations at the nearby Archer Park.
“We were calming people down, assisting with injuries, providing with aid,” Larnach says. “Then it was about helping paramedics and the emergency services.
“There were scenarios where our lifesavers were administering first aid so the paramedics could keep an eye on the overall situation.”
Larnach says lifesavers are taught to be “proactive over reactive”. That meant, in many cases, running into open fire instead of sheltering inside the club. Quickly, a patch of grass by their clubhouse became a triage centre for the injured.
Rescue boards were being used as makeshift stretchers and became covered in blood.
“We haven’t got a Band-Aid left in the club,” Larnach says.
As the situation was neutralised about 9pm, their role turned to reuniting loved ones who had become separated taking shelter at different locations.
Among them was a heavily pregnant woman, who went into labour during the terror attack. She sheltered at North Bondi’s clubhouse with her young daughter before her husband eventually arrived on the scene.
Larnach says one lifesaver sat with her for hours, making sure she was OK.
“We did our best to calm her down,” he says. “Her focus was on her other child, making sure she was OK.”
Down the road, the Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club had a full view of what was occurring. Their clubhouse looks directly out on to Archer Park.
Its president, Liz Webb, says people initially thought the shots were fireworks, “but a woman who grew up in the country said ‘No, that’s a gun’.”
“Everyone said ‘Oh my god’, and then it kept going. Our members could see the park from the balcony so they were witnessing it as it was happening,” she says.
“There was a lot of uncertainty – do you lock the club? Do you open the club? But when they saw the kids in the park, our members ran out under live fire to get the kids out. That’s when the gravity of the situation became quite clear.
“They were responding in real time, because they were right there.”
The chief executive of Surf Life Saving NSW, Steven Pearce, says lifesavers were “running from the water up into the park to try and save people”.
Then there were reports of someone in distress in the water – because people were fleeing to the sea to try to escape the gunman, so lifeguards were deployed to assist them.
“There is not a piece of first aid equipment in both clubs that hasn’t been used,” he says. “They’ve completely been stripped of everything, just trying to do everything they could to assist the ambulances once they came.
“It shows the best of humanity. We’re just incredibly proud.”
For now, Bondi beach remains a ghost town, empty bar a couple of surfers and couples walking by the shore. On Saturday, though, lifesavers will be able to patrol the beach for the first time since the shooting with the assistance of equipment from other clubs.
“The support is overwhelming that we’ve received from other surf clubs around Australia. It is a real family,” Larnach says.
“Surf clubs are very good at that. We’re a great leveller. When you cross the threshold, you are a surf club member above and beyond most things.”
Webb says the ocean, too, is a great leveller.
“You might get a wave and you might not. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the ocean, and what we saw on Sunday was a whole lot of uncertainty happening in the parks,” she says.
“You’re making decisions without facts a lot of the time, and you’ve got to keep going. That’s what our members did – and that’s exhausting. Now we need to take time to let them heal.”
Because of their efforts, especially administering CPR on many of the victims, Webb says “there’s definitely lives that have been saved”.
