6 Burning Palms Surf Life Saving Club Inc. – 86th Annual Report – 2024-2025 Season President ‘No Lives Lost’! This is certainly one of the most rewarding exclamations any President can make at the end of a surf life saving season. This has much greater relevance today where we learned that in the previous season, 150 coastal drownings occurred and sadly to date, a much higher one this season! These statistics clearly show that education is missing its mark and more and more people are ignorantly making foolhardy decisions to swim in unpatrolled areas of our coastline or outside patrol hours. This should serve as a reminder to all as to why we need to keep our skills at a confident proficient level so we can respond without risk to ourselves. I would like to record my appreciation to the Patrol Captains, Committee Members and others who assisted in supervising and assessing members’ skills through the annual skills maintenance program, more is written in the Training Officer’s Report in this report. What a season it has been! Whilst I will probably miss some events which I know Peter will mention in his report, there could be none more pleasing that our 40th Clubhouse Anniversary. What a day of celebration and more importantly the memories that were provided through the historical pictures taken at the time of original construction! Thank you to all who attended and also more specifically to the organisers!! To ensure our club always showcases in a very presentable manner I would like to record my appreciation to all who gave time effort and experience to labour voluntarily at our Club Work Days! Thank you and I do hope you will be able to help again next season and perhaps bring a few friends along with you. Every visitor to the club remarks how good it looks, which we know can only be maintained through the working bee days. Your efforts on the Club’s behalf are greatly appreciated. To Dave Falkiner and his March Past Team, congratulations on waving the Club Flag all the way to the national Titles in Queensland. Whilst the results were not what was hoped for, if a more stable team can be found, success too might follow. To all who marched a big thank you and a hope you can back up next season. The life blood of any club is found through rejuvenation which translates in reality to welcoming new members. To all ‘newbies’, thank you for taking the plunge literally and gaining either your SRC or BM. I hope you find the same reward I and many others have had through our surf life saving membership. We report every year that the way to improve as life savers is to gain skills through challenging oneself by undertaking additional awards. This season has been no different and I thank our members who made time to train with our trainers to better support our patrols with additional skills capacity. Well done and ask that you look to challenge yourself again next season, there are always more award challenges you can take. The Club’s appreciation is again recorded in the Training Officer’s report. I would also like to extend the Club’s appreciation to Dave Love, Sydney Branch Director of Youth and Junior Development and his team for again introducing his youth leadership team to the Palms. It was great to be able to host the Branch and show the challenges our members overcome just to do patrols! On behalf of our active membership in particular, I would like to record our appreciation for the support given on our behalf by the Branch President, Elissa Hancock and Director of Life Saving, Michael Bonnici to lock in our 2025-2027 Life Saving Service Agreement through negotiations with SLSNSW. We can now fully focus on keeping visitors to the RNP safe when they investigate the Figure 8 Pool or take a swim in the surf at the Palms. To reach this point our members might not realise that their Executive Committee worked with our neighbours to present a united proposal to SLSNSW through the Branch that reflects the challenges we face every season whilst on patrol.
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