March 8 is International Women’s Day and Scarborough Wombarra has a great reason to celebrate – this summer, the surf club fielded its first all-female patrol! The Illawarra Flame reports

As a teenager, Rachelle Balez was the only girl on her patrol. Today, the 35-year-old scientist captains a patrol made up entirely of women at Scarborough Wombarra Surf Life Saving Club (SLSC).

Rachelle is the daughter of sculptor Didier Balez (the artist behind Comradeship, the beautiful steel sailboat memorial overlooking the ocean at Coledale). Rachelle grew up in Wombarra in a quieter time, when artist Ian Gentle had his studio at Clifton, before Sea Cliff Bridge, weekend crowds and standstill traffic. She remembers days at the beach when her dad was the only life saver on duty. The surf club was small; its female quota was tiny.

“I was the only girl who did my Bronze Medallion when I was 16, and I was probably the youngest by 10 to 15 years,” Rachelle says.

“Most of the guys that were doing it were young dads and their kids had just started Nippers.

“It probably wasn’t until over 10 years after I did my Bronze Medallion that I had my first patrol with another girl.”

Role models to the rescue

In the space of 20 years, Scarborough Wombarra SLSC has transformed – today it’s an inclusive, family-friendly club that offers great opportunities for all women, young and old.

Having active female patrollers provides role models for the next generation of surf life savers, something Rachelle missed growing up.

“I didn’t see any female IRB drivers. I didn’t see any female patrol captains,” she says.

“For me, growing up, being a girl, I always believed I could be anything I wanted. It’s only as an adult that I recognised how much energy that took, believing I could be something if I couldn’t see it.

“And now, if you can see it, you don’t need to spend the energy believing it – because you already know it’s possible.”

Even so, some young girls still find a traditionally male-dominated environment intimidating, Rachelle says.

“You’re seeing that it’s possible, but the safe spaces don’t necessarily exist. And I think that’s where having an all-girl patrol does create, for some girls, a safe space. That’s not an issue for everyone, but it is for some.

“That’s why I didn’t really start surfing until I was in my 20s. Because it was too intimidating being the only girl out there. Now I go to Sharkey’s and we’re the majority.

“So things are changing.”

How the club saved itself

In late 2020, Scarborough Wombarra SLSC hit rock bottom, barely able to fill a month of Sunday patrols. The club was down to just 17 patrolling members – all on the verge of burn-out.

“It was a dire situation, we needed people,” Rachelle says.

In October 2020, club president Ant Ritter – the former CEO of Skydive the Beach – launched a campaign to attract new members.

His call-out featured on the November 2020 cover of 2515 Coast News, with photography by Ant’s son, Sean.

“The promotional drive that Ant did obviously was hugely effective,” Rachelle says.

“One of the women on my patrol, Kath, had just moved from the Blue Mountains. She had read the article in 2515 and thought, ‘Well, why not?’ She was a council lifeguard, new to the area, wanted to get involved with the local community.”

A season on, the campaign’s success is clear: not only has the club grown, but 44% of its members are women and Scarborough Wombarra is fast gaining a reputation as a great place for girls to do their Bronze.

“We have so many girls now, we can do an all-female patrol. It’s really exciting,” Rachelle says.

There are 15 members in Rachelle’s patrol, including three adult leaders and about a dozen teenage girls. Their ages range from 14 to 35.

“And that’s not all the girls, because there’s others spread out over other patrols,” Rachelle says.

“Most of them came from doing their Surf Rescue Certificate and Nippers.

“We’ve got such a big, strong group that has gone through. The social aspect has been retained and that’s the ethos behind having the all-girls patrol – to keep those friendship groups strong.”

The girls go to various high schools, from Bulli to St Mary’s. “There’s small friendship groups within the bigger cohort but the common denominator is they’re local to the Scarborough Wombarra area.

“The girls have shown themselves to be diligent and respectful surf lifesavers, with a great sense of initiative.

“Considering 15 years ago I was the only patrolling girl, it’s wild how far we’ve come in such a short space of time.”

The change in power dynamics

Rachelle is not only a leader on the beach, she’s also breaking new ground as a research scientist, working on her PhD at the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute at the University of Wollongong.

“I take skin cells from people who have Alzheimer’s disease and I change their skin cells into stem cells. Then from a stem cell you can grow theoretically any cell type in the body and I grow brain cells.

“And then I run a bunch of different experiments to understand the neurobiology of what’s different in the Alzheimer’s disease cells versus the healthy individuals. And what changes could be leading to the development of disease and then how we could modulate and protect against those changes to inform the development of treatment.

“The work that I do is very fundamental science. It’s looking at the molecular mechanisms that interplay, so we rarely have an ‘aha!’ breakthrough, but we provide additional pieces to the puzzle.”

In 2018, Rachelle – along with fellow UOW academic, Thirroul geographer Sarah Hamylton – was honoured to be among 80 female scientists from around the world chosen to take part in Homeward Bound.

The prestigious leadership program aims to address the gender imbalance in science’s top jobs, forge bonds between influential women and work towards solving global crises such as climate change. The highlight of Rachelle’s year-long course was a voyage to Antarctica, a trip packed with adventure, “lightbulb moments” and leadership lessons.

“Having this all-girl patrol has made me reflect on my Antarctica experience,” Rachelle says.

“I learned a lot with Homeward Bound, being in female groups where you had to think creatively or more strategically about issues you may face.

“There’s this really huge change in the power dynamics, because you’re all female. The male-dominant leadership style gets neutralised and you’re exposed to all these different ways operating, or problem-solving and mediating.

“And I found the same when I became a patrol captain for Scarborough.

“I’d always been in all male-dominated patrol groups. Because there’s a physicality that comes with that, there’s also a casualness in regards to [rescue planning], they know they’re going to have big strong men that can swim out to someone in trouble.

“But now myself – I’m a strong girl but I’m not a big girl – and with 14- to 16-year-olds making up the majority of my patrol, we can’t rely on that pure physicality. Because if we’re pulling out a 100kg person who’s in trouble – there’s real physical limitations to that.

“So I then have to start thinking, okay, how do we work as a team and a collective to know who’s got the strength to swim in groups of two or three to bring this person in.

“Then who is going to be, say, doing crowd control, who’s going to come and do resus…

“This sort of planning is not something that I’ve ever had to think about too much because I’ve been part of a ‘muscle-strong’ team.

“It’s been interesting thinking how to deal with these problems.”

Building a club that cares

The club’s aim now is to not only recruit but retain members. To do this, the club offers incentives (like covering the membership fees of its patrolling members) and hosts social events, including lunches at Wombarra Bowlo, so people on different patrols can get to know each other and build a rapport.

“It’s really important to bring in that social aspect of the club,” Rachelle says. “So it’s more than just somewhere you show up for three hours and watch the surf – it gives you something back as well.

“Bindi, our old president prior to Ant, brought in a really lovely club dinner in the middle of winter to celebrate the end of the season and to touch base. I really enjoyed that.

“It’s those small things that show the club cares about you that I think helps people then care about the club.”

United by a love of the beach

In times of division, when Covid has highlighted the inequality in our society, the surf club remains a bastion of egalitarianism, a place where friendships often cross the usual lines of age, class and gender.

It’s the kind of place where a leading scientist may make friends with anyone from a teenage schoolgirl to an apprentice tradie.

“You get such a cross section of different people coming to patrol,” Rachelle says. “Then you start to find other interests and get exposed to people beyond your normal social group, or friendship circle.

“That’s really lovely, in that in one patrol you get people from completely opposite walks of life, so you get exposed to different ideas and ideologies and perspectives. I always find that really interesting.

“We’re such different people, but we have this common love of the beach and the surf.

“It’s one of my favourite parts of patrolling.”

Visit www.scarboroughwombarraslsc.org or email info@scarboroughwombarraslsc.org

This story appeared in our March 2022 edition.