FEATURE THE DARK AND THE LIGHT OF BONDI
The dark and the light of Bondi By Sarah Homewood
D
uring an Australian summer there are few places better than Bondi Beach. Tourists and locals alike flock to the famous location during the warmer months and when it comes time for most to head back to the office, for a special few this beautiful location is where they make a living. For Bondi lifeguard Jesse there is nowhere he would rather work. “I’ve been a Bondi lifeguard for three years, three good years – it’s unreal, not many people can wake up and say they like going to work.” However there is a dark side to Bondi, which very few will thankfully ever see. Just a 5km north of the popular beach is an ocean cliff called The Gap. The cliff has beautiful views but a dark association which doesn’t match it’s inner-city prized location, The Gap is known as a place where people commit suicide.
Depression Definition: People often use the word depression when they are talking about moments or phases when they’re feeling sad or down. But more officially, depression is a name for a range of different conditions. These include conditions where someone feels a sadness that is more severe than normal, lasts longer than two weeks and interferes with how they cope with everyday life. Clinical depression (also known as non-melancholic depression and major depression) is the most common type of depression and it affects one in four females and one in six males over their lifetime. It can be hard to diagnose because some of the symptoms of other types of depression are really unique (e.g. impaired mental functioning, psychotic features or physical disturbance), whereas the symptoms of clinical depression aren’t so specific.
It is estimated that every year 50 people end their lives at The Gap and often those who are first to respond are the lifeguards at Bondi. Jesse had only been on the job two weeks when he was first called to The Gap. “When I first started working at Bondi I had to go to a suicide and I will never forget it,” he says. “A lady had jumped and she fell 100m and stayed on the rocks, I can still remember everything she had on and whenever I go past, I still see her.” When lifeguards are called they are rushing to save someone’s life and Jesse explains that for him even when he gets a call to the notorious Gap, it is no different. “Look my job is to keep everyone safe and if I hear someone has jumped I am racing as fast as I can to save someone’s life. I’ll always put my body on the line to save someone’s life, even if I don’t think they’re going to be alive when I get there. That’s the job I signed up for.” Jesse himself is no stranger to suicide in not only his professional life but also his private life. “I’ve had a good friend who took his life and to deal with suicide at work its really hard because I know what the families are going though, 36 lifeguard magazine
honestly, it’s a really dark time,” he says. Having experienced lows himself and having seen the effect that suicide has on the community, last winter Jesse and fellow young Bondi lifeguard Maxi decided to do something different to try and raise awareness about depression and suicide prevention. “I was sitting with Maxi at North Bondi and we were talking about how everybody is doing stuff at the moment and I said let's do something.” “Maxi was an ambassador for headspace and we went to them and told them that we wanted to do something for the charity and they backed us 100%.” However what the boys had planned took a few people off guard and at first support was slightly difficult to find. For Jesse and Maxi being in the water everyday during summer wasn’t enough, so they chose to take it to the next level proposing that they ride on jetskis from Bondi Beach to Cairns in northern Queensland, a journey of more than 2,500km.
WE RAISED THE MOST MONEY IN THE HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN SITE OF POZIBLE. When discussing their plans Jesse said, “a lot of people said it wouldn’t work so we went about proving them wrong.” The boys launched an online fundraising campaign via the site Pozible which allows everyday people to donate money to a cause they believe in often for something in return, and in this case it was signed photos of the boys and surfing lessons, just to name a few. From there everything moved extremely quickly and the support they were looking for was quickly found online. “We raised the most money in the history of the Australian site of Pozible and Channel 10 and the National Geographic channel got on board to film us,” Jesse said. “It was a fantastic feeling to prove people wrong, we wanted to show that if you put your heart to something anything is possible.”