Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Keith Caldwell
Interviewer: Edie Swift
Interview Date: 11 January 2021
Edie Swift: Today is January 11th, 2021. I am Edie Swift, and I am interviewing Keith Caldwell, the President of Bulli Surf Club for the Illawarra Stories Oral History Program run by the Wollongong City Library. We will be discussing the Bulli Surf Club and all its functions. So we could start now, if you want to talk about the club and you want to talk about what you do and what the club does.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, Edie, yeah. Thank you for this. I suppose Bulli Surf Club’s been around since 1913, so we’re 107 years strong. I think surf lifesaving in Australia first started around 1907. There’s still some debate which was the first surf club that started. But we were a few years behind that, about six, six or seven years behind that. So, yeah, going for 107 years. Um, we’re currently, I suppose, um, the Illawarra Surf Lifesaving Club of the Year. We’re also Illawarra’s patrolling Club of the Year given out at last year’s Surf Lifesaving Illawarra Awards of Excellence and only a month or so ago, we received the award as the NSW Sport Community Club of the year. So, ah, which is a pretty good achievement with all the sporting bodies, um, not only surf lifesaving clubs, but football clubs, soccer clubs, athletic clubs, so forth in the State. So, um, yeah, I suppose that’s, um, that’s where we sit there. Membership base, um, we’re sitting around close to seven hundred, which is active, um, and long service and life members and Nipper activities. So that’s Nippers is about three hundred plus and then the rest is made up of general patrolling members, associate members, life members and so forth. So um, we’ve gone from middle of the road in the seventeen clubs in Illawarra to now being, um, the biggest club in Illawarra, basically, with membership base, so everything’s travelling pretty well so we’re bucking the system in regard to, um, people joining surf clubs. I know a lot of the clubs, or a few of the clubs in Illawarra are struggling, ah, with membership base, but we’re bucking the system. We’re actually, um, gaining more members and specially around that age of between thirteen and seventeen years of age, which is a hard age to keep the kids. So yeah, everything’s travelling pretty well.
Edie Swift: Now, what do you do with the Nippers?
Keith Caldwell: Ah Nippers? So we, we, our Nippers runs basically from, ah, middle of October till about, um, the end of February, early March. Ah, we operate every Sunday morning with our Nippers and it’s all about, um, having fun, education, surf awareness and getting the kids to, um, better understand the skills of reading the surf and feeling safe in the surf. So, and of course meeting new friends and then hopefully those Nipper kids then progress into what I just said before, that age group of thirteen when you can first get your first Life Saving award as a senior member of the club, which is a surf rescue certificate and then at fifteen you can gain your bronze medallion, so that’s where we hope that we have kids coming through to, to, keep doing, um, the involvement in the Surf Club and then the community aspect of volunteer patrols.
Edie Swift: And then they get, um, different schooling then at from thirteen to seventeen.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, basically, thirteen, thirteen, onwards, um, is a different sort of aspect of, um, surf lifesaving where, um, we cover, well, the club covers all aspects. So we’re pretty strong overall in all aspects of surf lifesaving. So with our education department, um, as I said, the Nipper kids have to go through various surf awareness, surf play, different awards that they get as a young Nipper and then you get into the senior component of the club where you get your surf rescue, bronze medallion, and then other lifesaving awards that you can obtain. But with that, that’s education and lifesaving, but we also, um, have, um, good administration, we have good surf sports which I think we’re the leaders, we’re the champion sports club for the last fourteen years at the Illawarra branch championships. So, um, we have good surf sports programs in place, so activities where surf and craft on the beach or in the boats and pool rescue. So I think that’s one aspect that, that gets, helps us retain our membership base as well with a good sports program.
Edie Swift: Now are these people volunteering as weekend lifeguards, lifesavers, or they’re not? What is that program?
Keith Caldwell: Yep, we’re all volunteers, we’re all volunteers at Bulli Surf Lifesaving Club. No one gets paid any, any amount of money or anything, um, so we’re known as lifesavers. Yeah, lifeguards, when you hear the term lifeguards and so forth, that’s the, the Wollongong City Council lifeguards that operate Monday to Saturday normally. And then we operate on Sundays and then over a six-week period we do Saturdays assisting Wollongong lifeguards and also public holidays. So that’s where our volunteer, um, hours come into play. Only this season I think we’re um, we’re up to about, ah, close enough to about eight hundred preventative actions, so advising people of not to swim there or moving people out of rips and so forth from the start of the season up until, um, this early period in January, ah, we’re close to thirty rescues have been performed and all up around I think it’s close to 2500 hours of voluntary patrol hours of our members, so…
Edie Swift: What do they have to do before they can become a patrol volunteer.
Keith Caldwell: The award, so the minimum is that surf rescue certificate at thirteen years of age and then you must have your bronze medallion certificate to be a patrolling member, sorry, to be an active patrolling member. If you wanted to come down to the beach and join a surf club, you could join a surf club if you didn’t want to do your bronze, but you would become someone, um, there’s a spot for anyone in the surf club, you could become a radio operator. Um, you don’t have to be active and proficient, um, you can gain that award. Ah, you might have your first aid certificate, so, um, you can have that award as a, as a patrolling member. No doubt you wouldn’t go in and do rescues and so forth, which there’s litigation involved with that, you must have various awards, um, for that which is the surf rescue or the, um, the bronze medallion. But, um, if, you know, an extra, um, eyes on the beach, binoculars, um, surveillance, um, we welcome anyone that comes down with any type of ability, ah, even disabilities or so forth, there’s a spot for anyone in surf lifesaving clubs.
Edie Swift: And what do you do as far as training champions who are gunna compete?
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, well, that’s, that’s our sports program. So I think that’s where, um, that’s where we’re pretty active in that, that, um, over the years we’ve, we’ve got some good surf sports programs in play, um, which some of the clubs in the Illawarra don’t have, which, you know, that’s, that’s, um, each their own, what, what they want to do involved in the surf club. But I think that’s one of our big retainers that keeps members coming to our club because of our good surf sports programs. We’ve got champion boat crews. Um, Bulli Surf Club’s been known as a champion boat club. Um, we’d be in the top twenty boat clubs of all time in Australian surf lifesaving championships. Our ‘A’ crew last won the Australian Championships in 2016. They’re the current Australian Open Men’s, um, boat representatives, so they competed against New Zealand last year in a Trans-Tasman series and won that, um, and they’ve won, ah, last year they finished second at Bateman’s Bay at the State championships, they were going for seven in a row with that. So our boat crews, and then we’ve got other boat crews, no doubt, in the club that, ah, aspire to be the Open Men’s crew or Open Women’s crew, so that’s pretty strong. In surf and craft we’ve had numerous people that have represented Australia, um, won State and Australian and World Championships. So I think the training programs that we put into play, um, is a big aspect that gains us members to come and join the club that, that want to, know that they’ve got to do their patrols. To be an active surf sports athlete you, you have to do a minimum hours of patrol to compete at the major championships, which is the Branch championships, the State championships, the Australian championships, and World championships. You can’t just turn up, join a club, and then say I want to compete at those titles. You must do some voluntary patrol hours and so forth, so that’s one aspect I think that, um, that we do pretty well along those lines. So, um, these other people that are doing the, um, they, they get into the competition with the running on the beach and then you see them go in the surf.
Edie Swift: Are they the same ones, too, that you also have something to do with?
Keith Caldwell: Yes, yeah, they’re same ones, yeah. So they’re, they’re our, they’re our, um, depending on how long they been involved in the surf club, they’re still active patrolling members, the majority of those people. Some might be long service members, they might be life members, where they don’t have to do patrols anymore, but majority of those people are active patrolling members in the club as well.
Edie Swift: How do they train?
Keith Caldwell: How do they train? Ah, well, they’ve just got various sessions that they’ll go through with our coaches. So, our surf and craft people, no doubt, um, they go to, um, swimming clubs to do their swimming of a morning or afternoon, depending on what sessions are available and then once they come down to the beach they do their skill set in there, on their boards, on, on club boards, or their boards, on skis. Um, our boats, we’ve got a gym, so our surf sports athletes train in the gym and our boat crews, um, do the training in the, the boats, um, under the, the tutelage of, um, their sweep or their, ah, coach, so, yeah.
Edie Swift: Oh, and then when they start out in those boats, how would they ever start out, you know, in the surf boats, if they wanted to do that?
Keith Caldwell: Well, we start out first up, we, we start out in, in, um, flat water. We also have erg machines, rowing machines, so we get the technique right, um, and then we put them into the flat water in the harbour or the Lake or so forth to see how they handle the, the, ah, physical rowing aspect from that, and then it’s determined by the coach or the sweep, whether they could do a stage of then, okay, let’s go out in some, um, surf and then mount up to the challenging surf conditions and go from there. So, yeah, it’s all, it’s all about, um, it’s all about safety and risk factor these days as well, everything is governed by litigation. They need to be a member of the surf club as well, and they’ve got to show that, um, they can try before you buy I suppose is a wanted word, but they’ve got to show that they can actually swim. It’s no use putting someone in a boat or on a ski and next minute they fall out or fall off and they can’t swim, so you gotta make sure that you’re covered that way, that aspect.
Edie Swift: Do they wear life jackets in those boats?
Keith Caldwell: No, they used to many, many years ago, yeah, they used to wear life jackets, the big, padded life jackets. Now, but no, they’ve, um, over the years, there was risk assessments conducted and so forth, and some of those were deemed, um, old and dangerous to wear. So they wear, um, high-vis lycra singlets, all competitors now that go out and compete, so, um, they wear, um, high-vis lycra. Um, boats, ah, there’s risk factors in regard to boats and also surf and craft, so, um, there’d be carnival referees and also emergency, um, management officer that will determine the risk factor of the conditions on the day, and they do a rating. It’s all, it’s all done, um, and if the surf’s deemed that it’s too dangerous, the carnival could be called off. And with the boats, they actually wear helmets now. So, um, if the surf gets too big, so they are mandatory and compulsory that there’s no, no going back from there. So if the surf’s too big, the, the crews decide whether they want to or not and if they do row they have to wear helmets.
Edie Swift: I just wondered about the other, ah, activities you have with the other clubs. Do you have anything with the other clubs?
Keith Caldwell: Well surf carnivals are, are the big thing that clubs run surf carnivals and the Illawarra Branch championships, as I say. So there’s seventeen clubs within the Illawarra, ranging from up north, from Helensburgh-Stanwell Park, down to Windang in the south. So there’s seventeen surf clubs that, ah, on each weekend the beaches are patrolled, and Wollongong City Council patrol during the week those beaches. So there’s seventeen clubs that will compete at the, the Branch championships that normally come up, um, in February. And we have the junior activities, Nippers, and then we have the senior component, and you have the boats as well, so we compete at those. Then there’s other local carnivals that, um, that clubs go in. They can compete outside the area and then we go to the major champos, of the, the New South Wales championships, the Australian championships, and then every two years there’s a World lifesaving championships.
Edie Swift: Where’s the World lifesaving?
Keith Caldwell: Ah, various locations, so club, ah, clubs, um, countries put in for it and then the National lifesaving committee that, um, deem that, ah, certain, um, nations are, are active and, and available. It’s very competitive these days because there’s large numbers that go to it. Um, you can’t just say well, let’s just have it at, ah, you know, at, um, Daytona Beach, um, because it’s a great beach or whatever, but they needed to look at all the external factors about accommodation, no doubt easiest for countries to get to and so forth. So, being from, um, America, that was the last – I went to Daytona in 2019.. ah, sorry – where the World titles in 2002 was a Daytona Beach, so that, it was enjoyable.
Edie Swift: That was a long air ride in the airplane.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, it was, um, yeah it took a fair while. You know we had to go to a couple of different, um, stoppages and whatever and that looking for the cheapest available deal and so forth, but we took a squad. At that stage, the World titles, you could have, ah, a 12-man team, so six ladies and six men that would compete in – no boats, boats were separate – just in surf and craft and also in pool rescue events. So we went there and, um, we were lucky enough to win a few titles and finished fifth in the point score in the world overall. So, um, that was really, yeah really good.
Edie Swift: And how many did, went over?
Keith Caldwell: Ah, there was twelve athletes and then, ah, there was about a touring party of about close enough to, to twenty-five.
Edie Swift What time of year?
Keith Caldwell: Ah yeah, good question. I knew you were going to ask me that. Um, summer in America [laughter]. So it was after…
Edie Swift: It’s very hot.
Keith Caldwell: It was after the Australian titles and so forth in that 2002.
Edie Swift: It’s very hot in Florida.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, yes it was. Yeah, it was um, it was good and, um, a storm came through on the Saturday night and Sunday, the last day of competition and they had to cancel a couple of the last team events because it was monstrous surf, and it was going through the pier and boards and skis were getting smashed and so forth. So, yeah, it was something a bit different.
Edie Swift: You don’t take your own boats?
Keith Caldwell: Ah, no, it wasn’t boats that time, it was boards and skis.
Edie Swift: Oh, boards.
Keith Caldwell: We took our own boards and skis over, but there was also a couple of, um, national suppliers from Surf Australia that supplied all the other countries that don’t have boards and skis and whatever, so there was a pool of craft that they could, um, use at the World titles which still happens now as they go through the World titles.
Edie Swift: Did you, um, also, um – the boats, I wonder where those boats are made that you use?
Keith Caldwell: Oh, various, various locations. There’s um, our, our crews row in, um, South Coast Boats they’re called, ah, used to be based down here in the South Coast, but, um, he’s up in Queensland now but still keeps his name as the South Coast Boats. So there’s all various, um, areas. Um, there’s Clymer Boats which is over in the northern suburbs of Sydney. Um, yeah, there’s, there’s, um, a couple of the major suppliers, um, and then there’s suppliers in each State as well. Just depends what suits the crews, and they’ve all got different, um, styles and, and different moulds that they make these days.
Edie Swift: What’s the best one?
Keith Caldwell: Uh, well, our guys would say South Coast Boats, yeah, ’cause they row in them, so…
Edie Swift And what are the boats made of?
Keith Caldwell: Ah, they’re carbon fibre these days. They used to be wood, yeah, but now they’re, they’re carbon fibre, so they’re very light. They tip easy. Um, if you go to a boat carnival and watch boats these days they can tip over in a 2-foot, 3-foot surf, you know if they’re the wrong balance and so forth, so, yeah.
Edie Swift: Now was that done in the old days so that it was easier to get out there and rescue, or what was the purpose in the old days of those boats with the crews?
Keith Caldwell: Ah, the purpose was I suppose they just built ’em that way. That was the, that was the way they build ’em, wooden boats and they used them as, um, as lifesaving, um, pieces of equipment. Ah, but then slowly they got taken out of, um, out of the sort of system because too cumbersome, too slow when the reels and lines came into play, that someone would swim out in a belt, um, with people on the line to rescue people. So, yeah, boats sort of drifted out and there, they’re mainly used, well, they’re used now as, as a piece of, um, surf sports equipment. And of course if the crews are out training, and our guys only the last couple of years have rescued people at Bulli whilst they’ve been out training in the boats after hours, um, people swimming.
Edie Swift: About the professional lifeguards, ah, how many do you have and is there a senior one who’s the head of the others, who’s kind of the senior?
Keith Caldwell: Well, the lifeguards have got nothing to do with Surf Lifesaving Clubs, so.
Edie Swift: Oh, okay.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, but I, I could. So Wollongong City Council have got, ah, I, I don’t know the numbers of lifeguards, um, that they’ve got, but they’ve got, um, a person who’s in charge as their, as a manager of lifeguard services. And then they have, um, two senior supervisors which supervise the seventeen beaches that are patrolled during the week with the, with the lifeguards, so, yeah they do that and that’s through Wollongong City Council and there, they’re all paid, um, staff of Wollongong City Council.
Edie Swift: So those lifeguards don’t train your people at all.
Keith Caldwell: No.
Edie Swift: Not at all.
Keith Caldwell: No, no, separate, completely separate, yeah, organisation.
Edie Swift: And what’s the senior component that you talked about when you were talking about the organisation.
Keith Caldwell: Ah, it’s just the senior component basically – like surf clubs, people get a little bit confused, um, surf clubs is Bulli Surf Lifesaving Club is the one club. Our Nippers is called our junior activity section. Some people will say, oh, it’s Bulli Junior Surf Life Saving Club. There’s no such thing, it’s a subcommittee of Bulli Surf Life Saving Club. So the senior component of a surf club is basically you’re under fourteens, thirteens-fourteens that go into the senior components. So that’s when they can first get their life saving award, and then they can do other things within this senior component of the club.
Edie Swift: Where do you get your equipment for your patrol on the weekends?
Keith Caldwell: Um, yeah, there’s various grants that are out available, Government grants, State grants. Um, we still have to do, um, chook raffles and we run meat raffles and so forth and we have sponsors so, um, we, we have to go through that whole process. So if you’re lucky enough to, to, um, get a grant, um, you go out and purchase your life saving equipment through Surf Life Saving Australia or their various suppliers that they have.
Edie Swift: Well they have boats don’t they that they take out there, or they don’t use those boats anymore?
Keith Caldwell: What boats are you talking about IR…?
Edie Swift: I just saw them once, use boats for rescue.
Keith Caldwell: So you’re talking about IRB’s now – inflatable rescue boats – the “rubber duckies” they call them.
Edie Swift: I think so.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, yeah, so rubber duckies. So, IRB’s, that’s one of the – every surf club, um, in Australia, that’s one of the, from the governing body, from Surf Life Saving Australia, you have to have a minimal amount of equipment on the beach to do your patrols, your voluntary patrols. And one of those pieces of equipment is an IRB which is an inflatable rescue boat with an engine on it, commonly known as a rubber ducky. They first came into play, um, around 1969, I think, at Avalon Beach, up in the Northern beaches. Um, it wasn’t official, but there was a rubber ducky on the beach, and it helped assist in a rescue of eight people I think, or six people. From there, 1970, then, um, some people put a recommendation to Surf Lifesaving Australia to, to have these included as a piece of rescue equipment. They were trailed, tested and that’s how it started basically, um, close enough to fifty years ago that IRB’s were, rubber duckies, are now an essential piece of surf lifesaving equipment.
Edie Swift: And they also – what other equipment do they have on the beach?
Keith Caldwell: Well, they have, um, jet skis as well, so, ah, rescue watercraft equipment, RWC’s, so the jet skis. Um, but there, surf clubs don’t actually own the jet skis themselves they’re through um, the State body, or the National body. So, um, they’re handed out to the branches, um, at various stages. So I think Illawarra Surf Life Saving might have five or six jet skis that are available that are used by volunteers from all the different clubs over the weekends that they’ll use them on the, on the Sundays to assist as patrolling members, um, as well. So they’re handy pieces of equipment – quick, can get out and help rescue people, so yeah.
Edie Swift: Do they mostly use their surfboards to do rescues?
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, look, it’s, it’s, you know, on the beach we gotta have rescue boards and we’ve gotta have rescue tubes available. It just depends on what, what the actual rescue needs to take place. Ah, no doubt if it’s, if it’s a mass rescue, if there’s, you know, eight, ten, twelve people involved, some people will go out with tubes and boards, but, um, of course, you know, the patrol captain then makes a decision whether the IRB is launched as well, which in that case it most probably would be because of the sheer weight of numbers of people that need to be rescued.
Edie Swift: Do you have charities – do you, um, like have a charity that you give to?
Keith Caldwell: Surf Life Saving clubs?
Edie Swift: Mm.
Keith Caldwell: No, well we’re a charitable organisation, so technically we shouldn’t be giving money to other charities as well. So yeah, we’re, we’re a volunteer organisation that’s, um, charitable. So, um, we ask for donations to come to the surf club to help us purchase all this equipment that we need. Um, it’s something like if you talk about, ah, an IRB, well and also we have vehicles, so we have um, our ATV, which is an all-terrain vehicle, um, they call it. Whether you’ve seen those driving around on the beach and so forth, they’re like $20,000 to purchase one of those. An IRB is about $15,000 with an engine on, on the back of it. Um, then you talk about, um, rescue boards, they’re like $2,000. Tubes, rescue tubes, about $125. Um, tents, you know, tents are close enough to $3,000 all signed up. Um, and then you talk about defibrillators and oxygen, ox, OxySoks and so forth, so, um, oxygen therapy. So, next minute you’re talking about, to actually man a patrol on the beach, and bear in mind they’re volunteers, so they don’t get paid as well, but it’s, it’s getting upwards towards $50,000-$60,000 to actually put a patrol on the beach with the equipment that they need, first aid kits and so forth. So yeah.
Edie Swift: My goodness.
Keith Caldwell: Yeah.
Edie Swift: Now Bulli, ah, pool there, the Wollongong Council that has to do with that.
Keith Caldwell: Yes.
Edie Swift: Oh, so you don’t do much. Oh, look, our, our, um, patrolling members, do roving patrols no doubt up towards the, the, ah, the Bulli pool and then the stretch of, um, Bulli beach down to Woonona, to Woonona Point as well, so we still do roving patrols there. No doubt we have the flags set up, the red and yellow flags set up, which, um, is deemed by our patrol captain or our club captain as the safest place to have a swim on the beach we believe at that time. It doesn’t mean it might be the best place, but we’re saying this is what we believe is the safest place. And then no doubt, we still do roving patrol surveillance of the rest of the beach, um, because Bulli’s about a kilometre long. So, um, as we know these, these lovely conditions, a lot of people decide they like to swim at non-patrolled beaches and outside patrol flagged area. And that’s where a lot of the deaths and tragedies and the incidents do occur. So, um, if there’s one thing that can come out of this interview and people listen to it is please only swim at a patrolled beach. We’ve got seventeen lovely beaches in Illawarra, um, and swim between the red and yellow flags, because if we can see you, we can save you.
Edie Swift: Do you – how about your building, has that had a history to it?
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, it has, it has got a bit of history. So, um, for people that have been down to Bulli just recently, we, ah, we got a new extension on to the surf club, um, and our committee fought very hard. It’s interesting, um, we talk about Wollongong City Council and so forth, it took us ten years to get that extension to take place, just with the loopholes, um, the dramas, the finances and so forth, and, um, but it was ten years of blood, sweat and tears. But what you see down there now is a, um, a high-quality surf club where we can put all our equipment in there, surf sports, lifesaving equipment. Um, we’ve got a function room upstairs that we can hire out to, um, various community groups. But yeah, it took us ten years and, um, for us as a surf club, as a as a charitable volunteer organisation, um, the cost of it was just outrageous. I just can’t believe the cost how, how it can be done. And our surf club alone we, um, we raised close enough to $2 million over to put money towards it and we had to do that, Council wouldn’t go forward unless we were helping as well. And, end of the day, I think it ultimately, yeah, cost a lot more than that, which in hindsight we should have just knocked the surf club down and moved the surf club fifty metres south and it would have cost most probably just $1,000,000 to build a brand-new surf club. But hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
Edie Swift: So are there more women in these days?
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, well, this, this current season, 2021, is forty years, ah, acknowledgement and celebration of women in surf lifesaving clubs. Ah, us at Bulli, yet again we’re bucking the system. We’ve got a lot of female members in our club. Nipper activities and young surf sports, young girls competing and so forth. And a few of us sit there and scratch our heads and sort of say, Mmm, why can’t we get more young guys joining the surf club, ’cause there’s young girls down in the surf club to meet new friends and so forth. But it seems to be that, um, you know, young girls, or women, um, they seem to be more focused on what they want to achieve and what they want to do, and that’s where we’re sort of, we’re heading at the moment. Um, don’t get me wrong, we’ve got some great male members as well, but, yeah, we’ve, we’ve got a lot of good, um, female members in the surf club at the moment.
Edie Swift: Now, this is great. Now would you like to add anything else?
Keith Caldwell: No, I don’t think so. I think, um, I think it’s, like the hardest part is, is for people out in the world understanding that they think there’s a lot of loopholes you’ve gotta go through to join a surf lifesaving club. Yes, there is, there is all the litigation and so forth, and make sure that you are skilled enough to do certain things on the beach. But as I said, um, we’re always looking for volunteers. I know there’s a few clubs in the Illawarra that are struggling with patrolling members and, um, it’s not like when I joined back in 1975 there was summer sport and there was winter sport and it never overlapped, but now it seems to overlap. If you happen to be a, a fairly good sports person and you’re making representative teams, your training starts early, it’s always October, November, and that’s where summer should be happening. But you’re training for your winter sports, to go into the winter sports, so that’s where I think surf lifesaving finds it hard. There’s so much more to do, um, there’s a lot more employment opportunities for young kids and no doubt young kids when they get that seventeen-eighteen years age mark, they want to earn some money, they want to get a car, they want to go out with their friends, they’re starting to go to Uni and so forth. So next minute the volunteer side of things falls away a bit. So that’s one thing that we really look at Bulli, making sure that it’s enjoyable – it’s not a chore to be a surf club member as a volunteer.
Edie Swift: Well, thank you. Would you like to donate this to the Illawarra Stories Oral History program?
Keith Caldwell: Yeah, quite welcome, right, love to.