this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Boyo and I had an interesting experience at the beach last night.
Teens floating away on a flamingo
While we were swimming about, we spotted two teenage girls with one of those blow up ride on flamingos. They were laughing as it was tumbling about in the wind and they were trying to keep it steady. A few minutes later, boyo asked where they’d gone and we noticed that the flamingo had drifted quite a way offshore, past the boat makers… and the girls were still on it. We honestly didn’t know what to do – there’s no life saving places near where we were and no boats insight.We headed back to shore to get ready to call for help if needed while thankfully some people on the beach had also noticed something wasn’t right. By the time we’d gotten back to shore, the girls had let go of the flamingo and were swimming back to shore and thankfully seemed to be quite strong swimmers. Another man from the shore and my boyfriend swam out to meet them in case they were exhausted/in more trouble than we could tell. The tide was out, so they reached a sandbar and were taking a breather by the time the men got close, at which point they called out to let everyone know they were okay.
But holy wow. Boyo was really shaken up by it and we were wondering – who do we call in that kind of case, if the girls had been stuck on that flamingo? Police, ambulance? Had it been a few minutes more, they were definitely beyond us reaching them if they’d needed.
Triple 0. There are emergency markers/signs on most beaches with a code that you quote to the operator but sometimes those signs are few and far between.
I know that seems like such an obvious answer and if we'd needed, I would have, but it's almost like... which service? Lol I'm overthinking outside of the moment, I know!
This is their expertise to decide and coordinate. Triple 0 operators will triage the situation and contact the appropriate services, they will know exactly what to do. You’re not expected to know what is needed when you call 000, just describe location and incident as best you can and they will do the rest.
24 hour emergency number Australian Maritime Safety Authority
AMSA
Will save that number, thank you!