Lifeguard Service
Keeping you safe in the surf is our long-standing commitment. The Gold Coast City Council employs the largest professional Lifeguard Service in Australia, which is responsible for the surveillance of the region's 60 kilometre coastal strip.We employ Australia’s largest professional Lifeguard Service - 37 permanent staff and 120 seasonal staff - who patrol 26 beaches year round and 42 beaches during school holidays.
The service operates 24-four-wheel-drive vehicles, 8 jet skis, 7 Quad bikes and elevated surveillance towers. The Lifeguard Service was the first in Australia to adopt a formal surveillance tower plan along the coastal strip in 1989. Now we operate 39 specially designed towers, strategically placed and numbered to help keep you safe.
Our advanced communications network links to our:
- Surveillance Towers
- Beach vehicles
- Powercraft
- Water Police
- RACQ
- Careflight
- Qld Ambulance Service
- Westpac Helicopter
- Surf Life Saving
- Lifeguard Training
Rigorous fitness assessments, testing rescue techniques, advanced first aid training, resuscitation, spinal management and helicopter training to retrieve swimmers from the ocean are part of ongoing training. Lifeguards also complete a gruelling bi-annual fitness test comprising:
- 750 metre ocean swim
- 1,600 metre beach run
- 800 metre paddle on a rescue board
Our Lifeguards are innovative, progressive and world leaders in ocean safety, rescue and education. They were leaders in developing rescue boards and wave runner jet skis and pioneered the Surveillance Tower Strategy to protect swimmers along vast expanses of ocean beaches.
Our Lifeguard Service is strongly supported and complimented by the Gold Coast's Volunteer Surf Life Saving Clubs, who patrol 21 beaches during weekends from September to April.
Beaches patrolled permanently include:
- Rainbow Bay
- Greenmount
- Coolangatta
- Currumbin
- Tallebudgera
- Burleigh
- 4th Avenue Burleigh
- North Burleigh
- Miami
- Nobby Beach
- Mermaid Beach
- Margaret Avenue
- Kurrawa
- Broadbeach
- Wharf Road
- Northcliffe
- Clifford Street
- Surfers Paradise
- Elkhorn Avenue
- Staghorn Avenue
- South Narrowneck
- North Narrowneck
- Breaker Street
- Main Beach
- Sheraton
- Couran Cove
A brief profile of the Gold Coasts many spectacular beaches will help you plan your next beach visit.
