Bronte Boy Battles To Win Top Lifeguard Honour

By Marcus Braid on July 8, 2014 in News

Lifeguard Troy Quinlan experienced the brutality of Bronte Beach and was reminded why it is considered among the most dangerous beaches in Australia.

Last October, Troy was patrolling the beach much like he had done the preceding nine years, when he was forced into an urgent rescue.

“I went out on the rescue board and a guy was struggling having fallen off his board out the back of Bronte reef,” Troy said. “The waves were a decent size and when I paddled back in this larger sized wave has come up.

“I had to get really far back on the board to try and stop it from nose-diving. The impact of hitting the water just shattered my chest.”

Troy saved the bloke’s life but sustained an excruciatingly painful fractured sternum in the process. Far from allowing the setback to take him off the job, he used the experience to spur him on to taking out the George Quigley Lifeguard of the Year award, which announced by Waverley Council recently.

“I had a pretty hard start to the year,” Troy said. “I fractured my sternum doing that rescue at Bronte and I had to show other skills than just lifeguarding as well. I had to do administration kind of stuff, like paperwork and whatnot. It was more of a leadership kind of role.”

Troy, 26, used all of his nous and experience gained from being a lifeguard at Bronte, Bondi and Tamarama since the age of 17. He believes Bronte and Tama are among the most hazardous beaches in Australia.

“You’ve got all of the hazards of the rocks and you have a lot of tourists from overseas that come down,” Troy said. “They don’t know the conditions there and there’s a lot of places where they can jump off the rocks and think it’s an easy way of getting out the back into the swell, but it actually ends up pushing you into the dangerous areas of the beach.”

Troy grew up at Bronte and Waverley’s head lifeguard Bruce ‘Hoppo’ Hopkins was his babysitter back in the day, so it’s fair to say the recognition has been a long time in the making. That long slog helped make winning the Lifeguard of the Year – in addition to the Lawrie Williams Best and Fairest Award – a thrilling experience.

“I’m extremely happy,” Troy said. “I couldn’t actually believe it when my name got announced. I ended up winning both awards. I got the Best and Fairest from all the boys and I got the Lifeguard of the Year from all of the bosses.

“For all the boys to have given me that award, it made me feel absolutely incredible. I tried really hard this year to prove myself and it’s good to see that kids out there want to grow up and be a lifeguard – it’s a good feeling.”

A key ingredient in fostering more young lifeguarding talent now than the era in which Troy began nine years ago has been the success of the Bondi Rescue television show.

“When I first started nine years ago, that’s when the show started up,” Troy says. “The year I started we probably averaged around 3,500 rescues a year; now if you look at our statistics, it’s increased a hell of a lot.

“The show has definitely got a lot of awareness out there and it’s still the same kind of crew. None of the boys have really left in the last nine to ten years. We’ve all worked very well together and know how each other work.”

And it’s a key reason why Troy isn’t finished yet.

“I want to be a lifeguard as long as I can,” he said. “H Man (Harry Nightingale) is one of our oldest lifeguards down there and he’s 63. Hopefully I’m still around when I’m that age.”