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The Myth of Bondi’s Black Sunday

DOUGLAS BOOTH
School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Otago, PO Box 56,
Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. Email: doug.booth@otago.ac.nz

Received 18 June 2015; Revised 12 July 2015; Accepted 22 July 2015

Abstract
On 6 February 1938, five bathers drowned while swimming between the flags at
Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. In surf lifesaving history, the day is known as
Black Sunday. The dominant heroic narrative of Black Sunday highlights freak
surf conditions and the gallantry, efficiency, and adeptness of Bondi’s volunteer
surf lifesavers. In this article I analyse this representation as a myth. Here I
employ the French philosopher Roland Barthes’ concept of myth, not as a false-
hood, but as simplistic story, replete with silences and devoid of critical assess-
ment. I argue that the myth of Black Sunday served the interests of Surf Life
Saving Australia well in establishing its status as the country’s premier safety
service. However, the culture that underpinned that myth still persists with
ongoing ramifications for risk assessment at the beach.

KEY WORDS Black Sunday; Bondi beach; surf safety

[M]ythology harmonizes with the world, not
as it is, but as it wants to create itself (Barthes,
1973, 170).
In the mid-afternoon of Sunday, 6 February 1938,
five bathers drowned in an area patrolled by surf
lifesavers at Sydney’s Bondi Beach (Figure 1).1
The deaths occurred in what the Coroner called a
‘boiling’ sea, and during a mass rescue in which
volunteer surf lifesavers hauled at least 180
bathers from the water, including some three
dozen who were unconscious. After the rescue,
the captain of the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving
Club (BSBLSC), Carl Jeppesen, who reputedly
rescued six people, briefed the media. ‘It is hard to
look back now on what it was like . . . in that surf’,
Jeppesen said: bathers ‘were sinking all around
us. We were doing our best to hold them up to get
them to the surf floats and to stop their panic. It
was our Black Sunday’ (Sydney Morning Herald,
7 February 1938, p. 13).
Returning a verdict of accidental death, the
Coroner, E. T. Oram, sang the lifesavers’ praises:
when it is realised that about 250 to 300
[bathers] were in a sea described as ‘boiling’,
we have a striking instance of the excellent
work done by our lifesaving clubs. One
wonders how many fatalities might occur
throughout the year if it were not for the ser-
vices of these voluntary lifesavers. They don’t
ask to be praised. Their work is voluntary and
it is wonderful work they do (Dubbo Liberal
and Macquarie Advocate, 26 February 1938,
p. 1).
Oram was not the only commentator to contrib-
ute to the heroic narrative of Black Sunday. Mar-
shall Dyer, a visiting American doctor, was
filming on Bondi Beach as the rescue unfolded.
Dyer gave evidence to the Coronial inquiry and
he told the press:
I have never seen, and I never expect to see
again, such magnificent work as was done by
those lifesavers. It is the most incredible work
of love in the world. Just imagine those men
all going into the water without a moment’s
hesitation, risking their lives, and all for love.
In America all our lifesavers are paid, except a
few students, who during their vacations do
voluntary work on the inland lakes without
pay. Yesterday’s rescue was the most amazing

370 Geographical Research • November 2015 • 53(4):370–378

doi: 10.1111/1745-5871.12138
D. Booth: Bondi’s Black Sunday
Figure 1 Bondi Beach circa 1930, State Library Victoria, H92.350/35.
I have ever seen. It was a scene which I will
never forget and when I get back to the United
States I will tell them about your magnificent
surf men. There are no men like them in the
world (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February
1938, p. 13).
The Sydney press likewise lauded them. The
Daily Telegraph (8 February 1938, p. 7), for
example, noted that lifesavers ‘seek . . . no
reward’ and ‘devote their leisure and their energy
to a splendid public service’.
In the aftermath of the rescue, the press sought
heroes. Jeppesen, however, was adamant: ‘no one
individual or individuals, was deserving of
special praise’. ‘Everyone did his job’, he said
(Brawley, 2007, 139). The BSBLSC appointed
its own investigation into Black Sunday which
also concluded that ‘credit for the rescues should
be given to the club as a whole and not any
particular members’ (Brawley, 2007, 140). Surf
Life Saving Australia (SLSA), then the Surf Life
Saving Association of Australia, subsequently
awarded the BSBLSC a special Meritorious
Award (Brawley, 2007, 140).
In this article I analyse Black Sunday as a
myth. I use the term myth not to signify false-
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
371
hoods. The death of five bathers was a tragedy
and lifesavers saved many lives; this should not
be overlooked. As well as dragging scores of
bathers ashore, lifesavers revived most of the
unconscious and a number ‘given up’ by medical
doctors (Maxwell, 1949, 84; Brawley, 2007,
138). Rather, following the French philosopher
Roland Barthes (1973), I use the term myth to
signify an overly simplistic story that is replete
with silences and devoid of critical assessment.
‘Myth’, in Barthes’s (1973, 156) words, ‘does
not deny things, on the contrary, . . . it purifies
them, it makes them innocent, . . . it gives them a
clarity which is not that of an explanation but that
of a statement of fact’ that requires no explana-
tion and ‘goes without saying’. More specifi-
cally, I challenge orthodox histories of Black
Sunday that focus on freak surf conditions and
the gallantry, efficacy, and adeptness of the life-
savers. In questioning the efficiency of the life-
savers, I look closely at their equipment,
especially the reel-and-line and the surfboat,
which I argue were ill-suited to a mass rescue.
Lastly, I propose that the deaths on Black Sunday
occurred within an institutional culture that sanc-
tified the prowess of lifesavers and underesti-
mated the dangers of the surf.
372
A ‘typical summer Sunday’?
Orthodox histories of Black Sunday stress two
conditions: freak surf conditions, and the gal-
lantry, efficacy, and adeptness of the surf lifesav-
ers. In this section I critique the first of these
representations.
Orthodox histories describe Black Sunday as a
‘typical summer Sunday’ (Bondi’s ‘Black
Sunday’, nd). These words appear, for example,
on a commemorative plaque in Notts Avenue
which overlooks Bondi Beach from the south.
The official weather report agrees, referring to
the weekend as ‘fine’ with ‘moderate tempera-
tures regulated by ‘prevailing south-westerly to
south-easterly winds’ (Sydney Morning Herald,
7 February 1938, p. 21). However, the phrase
‘typical summer Sunday’ makes no mention of
the surf. In popular accounts, an ‘unexpected’ set
of large waves ‘demolished’ (Sydney Mail, 9
February 1938, p. 18), ‘cut away’ (Daily Tele-
graph, 7 February 1938, p. 1), ‘destabilised’
(Ford et al., 2007, 1), or ‘collapsed’ (Slattery,
1963, 109–10) the sandbank on which hundreds
of unsuspecting bathers were standing. Thrown
off their feet, the bathers were dragged seaward
in what were tumultuous waters; five drowned.
Official weather maps for Friday, 4 February
(Sydney Morning Herald, 5 February 1938, p.
17) and Saturday, 5 February (Sydney Morning
Herald, 7 February 1938, p. 21), show two low
pressure systems in the Tasman, one off the east
coast of New South Wales and the other east of
Tasmania. These systems generated the ‘moder-
ate to rough seas’ described in the notes accom-
panying the official weather reports but which
historical accounts omit. Moreover, the term
‘unexpected’ used to describe the waves in the
mid-afternoon on 6 February 1938 is inconsistent
with the surf prior to that time.
On Friday, 4 February, Bondi resident and
bather Charles Walters drowned in rough surf
(Sydney Morning Herald, 5 February 1938, p. 12).
On Saturday, 5 February, Bondi lifesavers per-
formed scores of rescues; in just one hour they
rescued 74 bathers, a number exceeding that for
some entire summers (Brawley, 2007, 133). Con-
ditions did not improve on Sunday as a large
number of rescues across Sydney, including 70 at
nearby Maroubra, testify. At Newport, lifesavers
rescued three people from a boat capsized by a
large wave (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February
1938, p. 13; Daily Telegraph, 7 February 1938,
p. 2). The Daily Telegraph reported ‘rough’ surf
throughout the day at Bondi and noted that beach
inspectors ‘were constantly blowing whistles to
Geographical Research • November 2015 • 53(4):370–378
warn bathers not to venture out too far’. Accord-
ing to the paper, ‘there were several minor rescues
earlier, and as the afternoon advanced the sea
became rougher’ (Daily Telegraph, 7 February
1938, p. 2). In an editorial, the Sun (7 February
1938, p. 7) said ‘experts all agree that a dangerous
surf was running. It was not that it was enor-
mously high, but it ran at unexpected angles, with
a heavy backwash and lateral currents. It was no
day for a feeble swimmer to take the water’.
Interestingly, commentators disagree as to the
number of waves that supposedly precipitated
Black Sunday. Journalist Ray Slattery (1963,
109) and the Sydney Morning Herald (7 Febru-
ary 1938, p. 13) claimed three waves, the Daily
Telegraph (7 February 1938, p. 1) four, beach
inspector Tom Meagher (Bondi’s ‘Black Sunday,
nd) ‘five or six’, historian Bede Maxwell (1949,
82) ‘half-a-dozen’, and the Sydney Mail (9 Feb-
ruary 1938, p. 18) ‘a series’. Only one contem-
porary report that I found made any attempt to
explain what the Sun (7 February 1938, p. 1)
called a ‘death wave’. Leo Cotton, professor of
geology at Sydney University, whose expertise
lay outside coastal geomorphology, told the
Daily Telegraph (8 February 1938, p. 3) that the
waves had ‘probably [been] unsettled by a
cyclonic disturbance at sea’.
With regard to the sandbank, coastal geomor-
phologist Robert Brander (2010, 127) is
emphatic: sand bars do not suddenly collapse.
Similarly, coastal geomorphologist Andrew Short
dismisses terms such as ‘freak waves’ and ‘col-
lapsing sand bars’ as media embellishments
which, he says, had ‘little relevance to the . . . cir-
cumstances that contributed to the accident’
(Short and Hogan, 1994, 198). According to Short
(1993, 44), people who are washed, or walk, from
a sand bar into a trough where the sand is softer
may believe that ‘the bottom has “collapsed” ’.
It is not possible to categorically describe the
geomorphological conditions at Bondi on Black
Sunday. However, a rhythmic bar, or a complex
configuration of rhythmic bar and transverse bar,
detached from the shoreline by continuous feeder
channels that nourish the rip on either side of the
bar seems most likely (Wright and Short, 1984)
(Figure 2). Several reports, and comments by
Meagher (Bondi’s ‘Black Sunday, nd), describe a
wide channel at the water’s edge and a sandbank
offshore in front of the flags. The bank became
accessible to bathers as the tide dropped in the
early afternoon; they simply waded through
the weakest feeder currents immediately behind
the bar. A larger than average set of waves
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
D. Booth: Bondi’s Black Sunday
Figure 2 Bondi Beach 1930, State Library of Victoria, H42700/153.
probably arrived around 3:00 pm – Slattery (1963,
109) refers to the waves breaking in deep water
and into the channel – and caused the water level
to rise in a process known as wave set up. Bathers
could easily have lost their footing during this
process which mimicked the sensation of a col-
lapsing sandbar. There are two possible scenarios
for the water that then returned seaward. The first
is that it flowed via feeder currents or lateral
currents off the bar, alongshore and into the rip
current channel which subsequently pulsed
(MacMahan et al., 2006). The second scenario for
the water is that it flowed as a flash rip directly
offshore from the sandbar. Brander (2015, 348)
has recently described such short-lived and spa-
tially variable flash rips. In either scenario, the
pulse could easily have reached speeds up to
2 m s–1 (Brander, 2010). An adult standing in
waist-deep water flowing at 0.5 m s–1 would find it
difficult to stay in one place; only world champi-
ons can swim at speeds of 2 m s–1.
Gallant surf lifesavers?
In addition to happenstance surf conditions,
orthodox histories of Black Sunday highlight the
efficient and professional roles of Bondi’s life-
savers. According to Ford et al. (2007, 1), ‘the
death toll’ on Black Sunday ‘would likely have
been much higher’ had lifesavers not been
present. In this section I examine this represen-
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
373
tation as a truism that ignores critical details.
These details pertain to the fortuitous congrega-
tion of lifesavers at Bondi just before the mass
rescue and the presence of extra rescue equip-
ment on the beach, the effectiveness of the equip-
ment used in the rescues, and the decision to
expose bathers to dangerous surf.
The number of surf lifesavers involved in the
mass rescue and resuscitations, and in what
capacities is difficult to determine. An unknown
number of lifesavers from the adjacent North
Bondi club also assisted their Bondi colleagues.
The Daily Telegraph (7 February 1938, p. 2) said
that ‘fifty life-savers and strong swimmers dashed
into the surf’ while Slattery (1963, 110) puts the
number at 80. Sean Brawley, a historian of the
BSBLSC and SLSA, says that over 50 Bondi
lifesavers participated in the rescue. According to
Brawley (2007, 134), at 2:30 pm ‘around 45
members’ were waiting for the race secretary to
organise them for an the intra-club surf race. The
rescue also commenced as the club’s patrols were
changing shifts. The change in shift placed around
four more lifesavers on the beach – the number
required to operate a reel-and-line, the principal
rescue equipment used by clubs in the first half of
the 20th century (Brawley, 2007, 49). Irrespective
of the precise number, the majority of the extra
lifesavers on hand for the rescue were there
because of a surf race.
374
There is an irony in this situation given the
question of whether surf lifesaving clubs are
humanitarian or sporting associations. Primary
sources relating to the early surf bathing move-
ment in New South Wales emphasise the impor-
tance of sport as the means to recruit members to
patrol and provide a safety service (Booth, 2001,
70–74). While individuals have their own
complex motives for joining lifesaving clubs
(Booth, 2006, 78), evidence shows that sporting
interests far exceed humanitarian motives
(Booth, 1991, 148–149). Indeed, rules regarding
patrol attendance, scrambles to fill patrol rosters,
and disciplinary proceedings against members
who absent themselves from patrols litter the his-
tories of surf lifesaving clubs. The initial rules of
the BSBLSC obliged active members to be ‘on
the beach at least twice each month’, but within
two years of its formation the club had intro-
duced a ‘double duty penalty’ for members who
skipped patrols (Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving
Club, 1956, 8, 9).
Reports disagree as to whether seven or eight
reels were used during the rescue. Jeppeson, the
club captain, said seven (Sydney Morning Herald,
7 February 1938, p. 13); Brawley, eight (2007,
136); and beach inspector Tom Meagher ‘seven or
eight’ (Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate,
26 February 1938, p. 1). Irrespective of the precise
number, the presence of extra reels on the beach
stemmed from a chance observation. While
watching the surf with Meagher, Jeppeson saw a
current rapidly drag a bather seaward. The power
of the current alarmed the pair and the club
captain called for extra reels (Brawley, 2007,
133). And regardless of the additional equipment,
this exalted local invention was neither designed
for, nor suited to, mass rescues. Effective opera-
tion of a reel requires preferably four people and a
beltman can only bring in one patient, perhaps two
under optimal conditions, at a time. In short, the
reel-and-line was, in the words of the Daily Tele-
graph (7 February 1938, p. 2), ‘too slow’ in the
conditions on Black Sunday. Moreover, the paper
described the lines as ‘a menace’, noting that they
entangled bathers, especially those ‘who
clutch . . . them wildly’. Indeed, the reel team that
hauled in Carl Saur, one of those who drowned
during Black Sunday, found ‘his wrist twisted in
the . . . line’ (Maxwell, 1949, 84).
The reel-and-line generated much debate
within the surf lifesaving movement over many
decades. Critics pointed out that lines were prone
to catching on rocks or being fouled by seaweed,
thus putting the lives of beltmen at risk (Best,
Geographical Research • November 2015 • 53(4):370–378
2006, 111; Conrick, 2006, 184). Historian Alleyn
Best accuses SLSA of waiting more than 25 years
before adopting a device that enabled beltmen to
release themselves quickly from ensnared lines.
According to Best, Manly surf lifesaver Steve
Dowling designed a quick-release mechanism in
1924 following the death of James King
(Corrimal, Illawarra, New South Wales). But it
was not until 1950, following the deaths of Merv
Fletcher (Dee Why, Sydney) and Jim Peryman
(North Cronulla, Sydney), that SLSA compelled
clubs to use belts with safety release devices
(Best, 2006, 111–112). The use of the reel-and-
line as rescue equipment declined steadily after
the 1950s and 1960s when it was used in around
2500 rescues per annum. In 1994 to 1995, surf
lifesavers used the reel-and-line just once to
perform a rescue (Ford et al., 2007, 7) and SLSA
let the equipment fade away (Best, 2006, 126).
Discussions around the effectiveness and
safety of the reel-and-line often evoked compari-
sons with the torpedo buoy. Bronte (Sydney) Surf
Life Saving Club official Walter Biddell designed
and produced a metal torpedo buoy in the early
20th century. It was a popular rescue device for a
few years before the Surf Bathing Association of
New South Wales, the predecessor of the Surf
Life Saving Association, banned it from compe-
titions and thus effectively from rescues (Best,
2006, 110). Australian lifesaving officials pre-
ferred the reel-and-line. With four operators, one
handling the reel, two feeding the line, and one
swimmer, the reel-and-line encouraged team-
work, mateship, and long hours of practice, all of
which SLSA fostered and promoted as evidence
of its members’ discipline (Jaggard, 2014, 281).
American lifeguards, by contrast, used the
torpedo buoy, which they claimed was their
invention (Lueras, 1984, 105), as their basic
rescue equipment (Jaggard, 2014, 281).
In 1956, a lifeguard team from the United
States, visiting Australia for an international car-
nival to coincide with the Olympic games in Mel-
bourne, reintroduced a rubber version of the
buoy. The captain of the US team, Harb Barthels,
compared their equipment favourably to the reel:
‘We reckon we can drag people out twice as fast
with this torpedo tube as your boys can with a
reel. You only need one man instead of five or
six’ (Jaggard, 2014, 278). Replying to Barthels’
claims, the secretary of SLSA, Ken Watson, said
‘if the Americans have anything worthwhile,
we’ll bend over backwards to adopt it’ (Jaggard,
2014, 278). Notwithstanding Watson’s ‘diplo-
macy’ and lobbying by prominent officials,
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
D. Booth: Bondi’s Black Sunday
SLSA ‘steadfastly ignored’ the buoy (Jaggard,
2014, 281). Even criticisms from World Life
Saving (WLS) fell on deaf ears. In correspond-
ence with Ces Small, the New Zealand secretary
of WLS, Vince Moorehouse, the American presi-
dent of WLS, described the reel-and-line as a
‘bloody’ piece of equipment and an ‘archaic’ life-
saving method (Ford and Jaggard, 2006, 204).
Black Sunday throws further light on rescue
equipment given that inflated rubber mats,
known as surfoplanes and a popular wave-riding
device in the interwar years (Carter, 2014),
served identical functions as torpedo buoys and
played a key role in the mass rescue. Stan
McDonald, who after retiring as the beach
inspector at Bondi leased surfoplanes to
beachgoers, ‘quickly appreciated’ that ‘there
were simply too many bathers in difficulty for
even the large number of lifesavers on the beach’.
He thus
called on the young boys who normally col-
lected his surf mats from the public to grab as
many as they could and get them to the life-
savers. Just before the waves struck, Bas
McDonald, who had been giving his father a
hand before the surf race by collecting some
surf mats from the southern end of the beach,
returned carrying 30 . . . on a stretcher. Club
members not manning a belt, line or reel
grabbed the mats and proceeded to sea.
Instead of performing rescues, some members
simply ferried surfoplanes out to keep people
afloat until they could be rescued (Brawley,
2007, 134).
Adrian Curlewis, the president of SLSA, also
acknowledged the worth of surfoplanes, telling
the press that ‘five and even six exhausted surfers
were able to cling to the rubber floats till life-
savers could reach them’ (Sun, 7 February 1938,
p. 1).
It should also be noted that the reel-and-line
was a highly gendered piece of equipment. SLSA
officials claimed that women lacked the physical
strength to tow a line and they used these asser-
tions to stop women from qualifying for the surf
bronze medallion, the minimum prerequisite to
achieve full active membership of a club. Pre-
senting what he no doubt believed was the defini-
tive word on the subject, Tom Meagher declared
that
the whole question was settled a long, long
time ago by the Creator when he fashioned
Adam. He designed him to fit into a surf belt,
to take the strain and bashing about that he
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
375
would get in fighting out and dragging a heavy
line through the surf, and then taking the
entire strain of the pull back to the shore of
himself and patient (or patients), the whole of
this to be on his chest. Can anyone suggest
that He designed Eve to take the same punish-
ment? (Bondi Surfer, April 1953, p. 232, cited
in Pearson, 1982, 128)
Ironically, the events of Black Sunday chal-
lenged the standing of male surf bathers. Several
lifesavers commented on the extraordinary panic
among the men in trouble, and the comparative
calmness of the women. One lifesaver described
the men ‘crying like girls, shrieking with terror
and shouting wildly for help’. On the other hand,
he said, ‘the girls were calm, and seemed to wait
quietly, keeping above water as best they could,
until they were rescued’ (Sydney Morning
Herald, 7 February 1938, p. 13).2 Indeed the five
drowned were all men, aged between 19 and 53.
Questions also arise about the role of the
Bondi club’s surfboat during the events of Black
Sunday. The boat was in the water at the time,
delivering the turning buoys for the surf race.
Notwithstanding a claim by the Sydney Mail (9
February 1938, p. 18) that the boatmen demon-
strated ‘great heroism’ during Black Sunday,
Brawley (2007, 136) says that the crew were
oblivious to the commotion and offered no assis-
tance. Like the reel-and-line, the surfboat was not
the most effective piece of rescue equipment.
Brawley (2007, 154–155) provides two examples
from Bondi. In 1941, a North Bondi boat crew
picked up two patients rescued by Tom Meagher
and other lifesavers, but the boat overturned
about 25 yards (22 metres) from shore. In 1944,
lifesavers launched the club’s boat to assist a
rescue, only to discover that the ‘bungs had been
removed. Shirts and under clothes were used to
stuff the holes but the effort was in vain. The
inexperienced crew swamped the boat about 100
yards from the beach’. Surfboats were used in
proportionally few rescues (Ford et al., 2007, 7)
before SLSA replaced them with motorised craft
in the mid-1960s. Today, surfboats survive in the
lifesaving movement primarily as a sport, an
extremely dangerous sport that Maxwell (1949,
86) called ‘mountaineering in boats’.
Other questions about surf lifesaving methods
also surfaced in the wake of Black Sunday. In its
editorial, the Sun (7 February 1938, p. 7) referred
to an apparent ‘lack of co-ordination in the
rescue’. More critically, the paper suggested that
Bondi lifesavers might have shown ‘precaution’
376
by either closing the beach or at least reducing
the area available to bathers. Significantly, the
editor noted that lifesavers at North Steyn on the
northern beaches adopted the latter strategy. The
suggestion is also highly relevant in light of Tom
Meagher’s reputation for safety. Described as
‘without peer’ in the history of surf lifesaving at
Bondi (Brawley, 2007, 235), lauded by the press
(e.g. Truth, 11 December 1927 and Sydney
Sportsman, 6 December 1927, in Meagher, 1980,
39, 40), and named by the police as one of the
heroes of Black Sunday (Sydney Morning
Herald, 8 February 1938, p. 11), Meagher aimed
to ‘stop’ bathers from ‘getting into difficulty
before they required rescue’ (Brawley, 2007,
132). Why didn’t Meagher close Bondi that day?
Aub Laidlaw, who was also on duty as a beach
inspector at North Bondi over the weekend of 5
and 6 February and who became involved in the
rescue late in proceedings (Brawley, 2007, 136),
claims that Meagher rejected the idea. In a long
interview three years before he died, Laidlaw
(1989, 35) said that Black Sunday ‘shouldn’t
have happened’. He disclosed that he wanted to
shut Bondi and move bathers to the more shel-
tered northern end of the beach. Laidlaw (1989,
35) alleges that Meagher ignored his advice and
told him to ‘look after the north end’ while he
‘look[ed] after the middle’. Like Meagher,
Laidlaw was a champion surf lifesaver and
swimmer; in 1929, the North Bondi club voiced
its confidence in him by appointing him resident
member caretaker. The following year, Laidlaw
joined Waverley Council as a permanent surf
lifesaver and beach inspector, positions he held
for four decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, he
would become Australia’s most famous beach
inspector, well known for rigorously enforcing
municipal bylaws against bikinis and surfboards
(James, 1964). Laidlaw (1989, 35) revealed his
cautious approach to lifesaving in the interview
during which he warned that the surf ‘changes so
quickly and so many things can happen’.
It is impossible to determine the truth of
Laidlaw’s allegation. However, notwithstanding
Meagher’s reputation, his evidence to the Cor-
oner’s Court expressed supreme confidence in
the prowess of Bondi surf lifesavers as well as an
element of victim blaming. Meagher told the
Coroner that ‘people were clawing at each other,
pulling each other under and trampling on each
other. We could have got them all back but for
that’ (Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate,
26 February 1938, p. 1; see also Newcastle
Morning Herald, 26 February 1938, p. 11). In a
Geographical Research • November 2015 • 53(4):370–378
later interview with Maxwell (1949, 82),
Meagher said, ‘earlier in the day and at high tide,
the rough sea kept most people from showing
themselves too game, and they didn’t give us
much trouble. But in the afternoon, as the water
shallowed with the fall of the tide, some got a
little cockier, and there was a gradual edging out
toward the end of the bank’. Meagher’s positions
resonate with surf lifesaving culture, as described
below; understanding this culture adds further
insights to the myth of Black Sunday.
Descriptions of lifesavers as corporeal elites
began appearing soon after the movement
formed. Journalist Egbert Russell (1910, 263),
for example, called them ‘the very highest class’
of Australian. They are, he said, ‘the Samurais,
the oligarchs, the elite. They strut the beaches
with superiority that is insolent’. In an analysis of
the lifesaving movement in the interwar years,
including several iconic pictorial images, histo-
rian Kay Saunders (1998, 103) shows lifesavers
‘literally and figuratively’ superseding the previ-
ous generation of soldier heroes. Subordination
of the sea was a key ingredient in the surf life-
saver as national hero. This emerges in scores of
books about the movement that bear titles such as
Heroes of the Surf (Harris, 1960), Gladiators of
the Surf (Galton, 1984), Surf: Australians
Against the Sea (Maxwell, 1949), and Vigilant
and Victorious (Brawley, 1995), and it is evident
in SLSA panegyrics. For example, when the
South Curl Curl Surf Life Saving Club opened in
1937, Surf in Australia, the official voice of
SLSA, proudly described it as ‘standing in bold
contrast against its surroundings’ and as a ‘tower
high above the wide beach’ which ‘gives the
impression of a mighty fortress with the beach
and surf under its submission’ (1 September
1937, p. 11). Not surprisingly, Maxwell (1949,
87) would declare ‘there could exist no condi-
tions at all likely to intimidate these men’.
Lifesaving culture and the details pertaining to
surf conditions and rescue equipment shed new
light on the five drownings at Bondi on 6 Febru-
ary 1938 which orthodox histories label Black
Sunday. It is a mythical label. Not because it is
entirely false: the drownings were a tragedy, and
Bondi, and North Bondi, lifesavers demonstrated
great determination effecting the mass rescue
and admirable perseverance resuscitating uncon-
scious bathers. It is a myth because the surf at
3:00 pm on Sunday, 6 February, was within the
range of conditions that had prevailed at Bondi
for at least the previous 48 hours, because the
official equipment used by surf lifesavers was
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
D. Booth: Bondi’s Black Sunday
ill-suited to mass rescues, and because the surf
proved, yet again, of the dangers of underesti-
mating its power. Unfortunately for bathers at
Bondi that day, Aub Laidlaw (1989, 35), who
understood that ‘you can never conquer . . . the
surf’, cut a lonely figure.3
Conclusion
‘The media’, Brawley (2007, 142) notes, ‘did not
immediately pick up on the [Black Sunday]
label’. Interestingly, the official centennial history
of the Waverley Municipality (Dowd and Foster,
1959) which discusses in some detail local life-
saving clubs, including those at Bondi, makes no
mention of Black Sunday. But the national asso-
ciation appropriated it to signify ‘the bravery,
dedication and indispensability of the surf lifesav-
ing movement’ (Brawley, 2007, 142). Caroline
Ford and her colleagues concur. They describe
Black Sunday as ‘the coming of age of an icon’
(Ford et al., 2007, 1). In their words, while it was
‘one of the most deadly and dramatic days in the
history of Australia’s modern beach culture’, ‘it
was also a day on which the importance of the
Australian surf lifesaving movement became
starkly evident’(Ford et al., 2007, 1). Over the last
80 years, this became historical orthodoxy. Chal-
lenging this orthodoxy as a myth is not merely an
attempt to correct historical facts. Indeed, cultural
historians increasingly recognise the impossibil-
ity of such a task (Schultz, 2010, 50). Rather, it is
an attempt to understand how the myth of Black
Sunday took hold, and to expose the specific
interests and political purposes that it serves
(Schultz, 2010, 50). ‘From the point of view of
ethics’, Barthes (1973, 136) wrote, ‘what is
disturbing in myth is precisely that its form is
motivated’.
An analysis of Black Sunday reveals a poor,
culturally based, attitude to risk assessment. The
deaths of three lifesavers who drowned while
competing in tumultuous surf at the national titles
in 1996, 2010, and 2012 remind us that questions
about that culture are still pertinent. In 1996,
officials sent competitors into the surf at Kurrawa
(Gold Coast) during the national titles as cyclone
Beti lashed southern Queensland with 5 m swells.
During the competition, 16 competitors were
treated in hospital with suspected fractures and
other injuries. On the last day of the champion-
ships, during the under-18 surfboat final, boats
from McMasters Beach (central coast of New
South Wales) and Kurrawa collided. It took some
minutes before anyone realised a rower was
missing. And it took three days to recover the
© 2015 Institute of Australian Geographers
377
body of 15-year-old Robert Gatenby which was
found 12 km away (The Surf Club, 2013).
In 2010, cyclone Ului hammered the coast
with swells up to 4 m as Kurrawa was hosting the
Australian surf lifesaving championships. Again,
officials sent competitors into unforgiving surf.
In one incident, the Bulli (Illawarra) boat ran
over the top of the Northcliffe (Gold Coast) boat,
putting the entire crew from the latter into the
first aid tent. Shortly after, the rowers refused to
compete at Kurrawa. In the ski leg of the
under-19 Ironman, an out-of-control ski hit one
of the competitors, 19-year-old Saxon Bird.
When his mother advised an official that her son
had not surfaced, the official replied, ‘he’s prob-
ably down the beach, please get out of the area’.
An hour later, rescuers recovered Bird’s body
(The Surf Club, 2013). Challenging surf condi-
tions greeted the 2012 national titles at Kurrawa.
On the third day of competition, jet skis and
inflatable rescue boats rescued ‘two or three
competitors from each race’ and ambulance
officers treated over 40 lifesavers. Professional
lifeguards working for Gold Coast City Council
advised the referee in charge of under-15 events
that the surf was dangerous. Five hours after the
warning, lifesavers were searching for 14-year-
old Matthew Barclay, a competitor in the
under-15 boys rescue board event, who had
drowned (The Surf Club, 2013).
The three deaths were subject to internal
SLSA and coronial inquiries. But Bob Wurth, the
chair of Surfprobe Australia, a community advo-
cacy organisation made up of current and former
surf lifesavers seeking better safety measures in
surf lifesaving competition and beach patrols,
accuses SLSA of a slow and tardy response to the
three deaths (Surfprobe Australia, 2015). Attrib-
uting SLSA’s response to a combination of
machoism and under-regulation, Wurth
(Surfprobe Australia, 2015) gives a contempo-
rary twist to the argument presented here that
surf lifesaving culture has long privileged the
prowess of lifesavers over the power of the surf,
over the safety of its own members, and over the
safety of the public. Herein lies the unfortunate
social power of the myth of Black Sunday which
discourages SLSA, and other agencies such as
local and state governments with an interest in
beach safety, from questioning the cultural
dimensions of risk assessment.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Rob Brander for his tutorials on rip currents during
my study leave in Bondi in 2014.
378
NOTES
1. Bernard Byrne (34), Ronald McGregor (21), Leslie
Potter (19), Carl Saur (53), and Michael Taylor (45). A
mere 6 km from the central business district of Sydney,
Bondi, is one of Australia’s best known surf beaches.
Surf bathing contributed to the development of Bondi as
a suburb in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the
1920s, Bondi was a Mecca for beachgoers; during the
inter-war years, it was not uncommon for 50 000 people
to visit Bondi Beach on fine summer Sundays. Coastal
geomorphologists describe the wave climate on the New
South Wales coastline as highly energetic and volunteer
surf lifesavers have provided a safety service for
beachgoers on weekends and public holidays during the
summer months since the early 20th century. Two surf
lifesaving clubs operate at Bondi, North Bondi and
Bondi Beach (today, the Australian surf lifesaving move-
ment comprises nearly 170 000 members in 311 clubs;
New South Wales has 129 clubs). Since the 1980s, some
local councils have employed professional lifeguards
(who wear blue uniforms) to complement the volunteers
(red and yellow uniforms); at Bondi, professionals patrol
the beach 365 days of the year.
2. In 1980, SLSA allowed clubs to admit women, largely as
a strategy to bolster declining membership (Booth, 2006,
99–110).
3. Laidlaw does not elaborate on Black Sunday beyond
what I report here. As to why he only became involved
later in proceedings, Brawley (2007, 136) writes that
‘Laidlaw and the North Bondi club were not aware of the
main tragedy on the centre of the beach until the alarm
was raised towards the end of the rescue’. In contradis-
tinction, Slattery (1963, 110) implies that North Bondi
lifesavers were involved almost immediately, ‘running
from their end of the beach’ and ‘bringing extra reels’.
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