TRANSCRIPT
Cape Solander, in Kurnell, just south of Botany Bay is a popular whale watching spot.
Inside the Kamay Botany Bay National Park, the picturesque location draws locals and tourists alike.
On the King's Birthday public holiday (10 June), it was chosen as a picnic site for three women and their families.
Two of them died, swept away while sightseeing near a rock platform.
A third was saved by a bystander.
Rabih Wassinne heard the calls for help - called triple zero, grabbed a flotation device and was able to save one woman who is recovering in hospital.
He says he is glad to have saved a life, but wished he could have done more.
"It's the first time ever in my life that I see something like this happening in front of me: people drowning in the water and yelling for help. It wasn't easy to see this. And actually, the waves were very rough. Especially this area near the rocks. It was difficult situation. Everybody would be happy to save someone's life. But at the same time, I am very sad that I couldn't help the other two that drowned in the water."
Both women are Australian citizens originally from Kerala, in southern India - much loved members of the Malayalee Muslim community - and both mothers to three young children.
Family friend and medical doctor Ahmed Kaithal Shahir says the death of two women is an immense loss.
"Marwa is a climate advocate. She's a postgraduate in sustainability and planning. She works for Transport New South Wales. And Shani is also an educator and entertainer. She's a very loved mother. Whenever we meet them, they make us feel like we are better than who we are. They always try cheer up the positive side of things. So it's a big loss."
Dr Shahir says the local community is arranging local funeral services.
They are also appealing to authorities to expedite the visa approvals for the next of kin to arrive in Australia to recover the bodies and make the next arrangements.
"It is an immeasurable loss. And I don't know how long it'll take. We actually cancelled all our community programs. We are going to be with them in this. We are in this together. All of our community members, A to Z, everyone is working hard to co-ordinate and help, trying to get visa process for the families because we want to bring them here ASAP."
Joe McNulty is the chief of the New South Wales Police Marine Area Command.
He says emergency responders arrived on the scene within 15 minutes, but it was too late to save the lives of the two women.
"No, there was no life jacket, but there was no intention to go rock fishing either, which we know is a very dangerous sport. They were there enjoying a walk along a rock platform. They probably didn't take into account the low tide and the extremely slippery rock platform when that wave hit them. And the water pressure from a wave was quite huge. Large volume of water, sweeping the three of them in one wave action into the water."
Two weeks ago (27 May), two Nepalese men who went rock fishing also died at the same location.
Mr McNulty says there is signage in place, but it is - at times - ignored.
"There is signage already down there. And I can tell you the day before the incident, Botany Bay Water Police were down there and they did issue three rock fishermen with infringement notices for fishing without life jackets. So our job is constant. We're always down there. We're always patrolling that area because we know it is a dangerous rock platform area."
He says urged community leaders and the media to assist the police in spreading the message of water safety.
Steven Pearce is the Chief Executive of Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
He says lifesavers were part of the emergency response team that arrived on the scene.
"It wasn't that there weren't enough emergency services responded. They all got there in a really quickly and timely manner. But as I said, to be washed off the rocks, unfamiliar to the area, we're not sure about their swimming capability. Obviously, no one was wearing life jackets. But then we don't really advocate people when they're visiting rock platforms - or just walking around headlands - to wear life jackets. That's solely for the rock fishers. But again, really terribly tragic. And it's just one of these times where we just really need to reach out into the communities and try and better promote just these water safety messages."
Mr Pearce says it is unrealistic to fence off the vast length of Australia's coastline, and education is key.
He says it's not just about swimming skills, but also knowledge about the terrain and wave conditions.
"Rock fishing and rock-platform related drownings is up by 50 per cent on this time last year. So we, we've seen now nine people lose their lives, either rock fishing or on rock platforms being washed off rock platforms. This summer was a very tragic summer for drowning. In saying that - the summer drownings along the coastline were reduced by almost 50 per cent to the previous year. So it does show that a lot of the initiatives and messaging that we do put in the communities are working. But again, when people think summer is finished, there are no more drownings. Well, that's when people actually start to recreate along these rock platforms. And the rock fishers come out to start rock fishing because at that time of the year for these pelagic species that they target to go fishing for. And really tragically our on-call Lifesavers and our lifeguards continually responded every week to people being washed off the rocks."
Professor Robert Brander is a beach safety researcher at the University of New South Wales.
He says the messaging to high-risk populations, including newly arrived migrants, needs to be more effective.
"And that's the big challenge. We have done studies of southern Asian communities before in terms of their beach safety knowledge, and they just don't have a lot, especially new migrants; or migrants who've lived in Australia less than 10 years, just don't have that knowledge. And that's because we're not teaching them. So you can say: well, why are these people getting in trouble? And sometimes you pick up, almost pick up a sense that people are blaming these people for being in the wrong place, but if they don't know any better, it's not their fault. And I would say that we just have not been doing a good job of educating a lot of communities throughout Australia in general about some of the hazards and risks that are along the coast and we need to get better."
He says education campaigns with spokespersons from within the community appear to be the most effective - and efforts in that area should be scaled up and funded.
"We also sort of asked in our study that we did, these surveys that we did: do you visit beaches with flags and unpatrolled beaches? And plenty visit unpatrolled beaches. Plenty choose not to swim between the flags. About a quarter of the people we surveyed didn't actually understand what the red and yellow flags mean, which is a big concern because on our beaches in the summer, at least - that is the main message we have is to swim between the flags. And yet a quarter of the people we surveyed didn't know that. And that tells me that we're not getting the message. We may think that message is getting across to everyone, but it's not. You need to understand the people. You need to understand what they understand - before you can start developing any sort of safety intervention. So it would be nice to see more people working in that field."
Mr Brander says it is important to understand the human factors of risk assessment - where the accessibility of Australia's beaches and water ways carry with it the risks of a dynamic environment that can be hidden to those who are unaware.
"It is a unique situation. And you think of the UK and beaches in Europe, for example. Well again, they've got winter and the beaches aren't very nice. If you think about in places in Southeast Asia and Asia, the coastline's there where they often have monsoons for part of the year. There isn't the same sort of beach going culture, in terms of swimming. And it might be a cultural thing and the beaches are not always attractive or they're remote and they're not visited. So yeah, Australia is pretty unique. We tick all the boxes for being able to go to the beach and the coast pretty easily."
