By RON LANE
WHEN you visit the Peregian SLSC and move amongst cadet members on either the first or third Sunday of each month, the respect that they hold for the man running the sausage sizzle in front of the clubhouse becomes apparent. All morning they come and go into the tent from which Rod Witham, Youth Development Officer for the Peregian club conducts his twice monthly fund raising business on behalf of the club.
It is now two years since Rod, affectionately known as Rocket, started the sizzle and the funds raised have been very beneficial. Rod, who started his career in the Pacific club on the Gold Coast in 1971, is now in his tenth year of working with cadets. On his journey from the Gold Coast to Peregian, Rod spent some years in both the Metropolitan Caloundra and Sunshine Beach surf clubs before finally settling in Peregian in 2004.
Speaking about his Sunday mornings Rocket said, “You know apart from the fund raising it is interesting to note the number of local kids, not cubbies, who have stopped to buy a sausage, have a chat and the next weekend come back and joined the club.
“So for the club the benefits are definitely a two way street.”
Probably the two major dates for the cadets are the etiquette night and the weekend visit to the surf club on Stradbroke Island. Etiquette night gives the cadets some added training in social behaviour while their visit to Straddie gives them a look at one of the few remaining traditional surf clubs in Australia – a club that still has a kitchen, kitchen duties, dormitories and most important for moral, nicknames for their members.
Both events were started by Rocket and his team and the visit to Straddie is now in its twelfth year. Recently as a sign of respect a large group of cadets and parents, both past and present, organised a surprise club barbecue at which Rod was presented with a new racing board painted in his favourite colour purple. When asked about the outlandish colour Rocket replied, “The kids know it’s my favourite colour… also it matches the colour of my car.”
The board which was shaped by his good mate Mark “Chicken Legs” Jacobs, was in appreciation of his dedication and training of cadets both past and present. With Rocket re-elected to office for another season, the ongoing positive attitude amongst the young members of the Peregian can only be beneficial. As we have said many times before, the future of our clubs depends on our youth. Therefore in this aspect Peregian is definitely headed in the right direction.
In the recently tabled Sunshine Coast Annual Report for the 2013/14 season, a paper entitled A Five Year Comparison of Operational Activities was presented and some of the information revealed was certainly worthy of note.
For example in the 2009/10 season our lifesavers performed a total of 1078 rescues and 18,702 preventative actions. In 2013/14 season they performed only 779 rescues but the preventatives actions increased to a total 33,551. These figures tell us that the standard of our beach patrols is indeed very good. The preventative actions – in which the lifesaver moves to tell the swimmers they are heading into a dangerous situation, thus avoiding what would be a rescue problem – indicate that our patrols are fully alert and on the move.
This is a factor that not only our organisation, but also the Queensland Tourism Board can take pride in. Having a high standard of beach safety is of the utmost importance to not only our community but also our visitors.
