Abstract
Multicultural communities in Australia are recognised as a priority area for drowning prevention, but no evidence-based study has addressed their knowledge of beach safety. This study used an online survey tool to identify and examine risk factors relating to swimming ability, beach visitation characteristics and behaviour, and beach safety knowledge of the Australian Southern Asian community to assist in the development of future beach safety interventions. Data was obtained through 249 online and in-person surveys of people aged > 18 years. Most respondents reported poor swimming ability (80%), often swam in in the absence of lifeguards (77%), did not understand the rip current hazard (58%), but reported that they entered the water (76%) when visiting beaches. Close to one-quarter (28%) had not heard, or didn’t know the purpose, of the red and yellow beach flags, which identify lifeguard supervised areas on Australian beaches. Length of time living in Australia is an important beach safety consideration for this community, with minimal differences in terms of gender and age. Those who have lived < 10 years in Australia visit beaches more frequently and are less likely to have participated in swimming lessons, be able to swim, heard of the flags or swim between them, understand rip currents, or have participated in a beach safety program. Very few (3%) respondents received beach safety information from within their own community. The importance of beach safety education and swimming lessons within the Southern Asian community should be prioritised for new and recent migrants to Australia.
Highlights
Australia is a coastal nation known for its popular beaches that support a range of recreational activities, but with large waves, strong currents, changing tidal conditions and varied and dynamic morphology, Australian coastal environments can be dangerous [1,2,3,4]
This section summarises results of the Multicultural Beach Safety (MBS) survey and presents data separated by the three primary variables relating to the survey respondents: age, gender and time in Australia (TIA)
While anecdotal information suggests that some multicultural communities avoid flagged and supervised areas due to a misunderstanding of their meaning (Section 1.1), results from this study suggest this applies to only a small proportion of the Southern Asian community surveyed (11%) who incorrectly identified the meaning of the regular flags as indicating an unsafe (10%) or a private swimming area (1%)
Summary
Australia is a coastal nation known for its popular beaches that support a range of recreational activities, but with large waves, strong currents, changing tidal conditions and varied and dynamic morphology, Australian coastal environments can be dangerous [1,2,3,4]. Multicultural country with close to half its population born, or having at least one parent born, overseas and approximately one-fifth do not speak English as their first language [8, 9]. This diversity is reflected in the drowning statistics with people born overseas representing 47% (n = 911) of the entire coastal drowning death toll in Australia between 2004 and 2021 [5]. These challenges should be placed in the context of existing attempts at safeguarding beachgoers in Australia as well as existing studies that have attempted to understand beachgoer hazard awareness and behaviour
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