It is sometimes hard to believe that swimming at the beach wasn’t always popular. It wasn’t until the summer of 1905/06 that people started flocking to Bondi to swim, and they came in the thousands. As you can imagine the vast majority of visitors had no swimming skills at all and no experience in the surf. After several drownings, a group of locals and non-locals met at the Royal Hotel Bondi on the 21 February 1907 and formed what was to be known as Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club.
For the first season members volunteered when they wanted to, however with the invention of the Surf Reel there needed to be a minimum of 4 men on the beach to use it. So, a patrol roster was devised for the next season. The 5-day working week didn’t come into place in Australia until 1948, so there was only 1