Bondi Rescue

- Season 2

(2007)

Now the sun is back, Bondi starts a new summer season. 35 lifeguards meet, old and new, including Blake (a city-boy age 18!), to bond during a refresher course to the great joy of a female audience. Real rescues start almost immediately- Blake does well. There is a real but short big (hammer?) shark alarm, reported by a clubbie (non-professional life-guard). Blake also handles a 'frivolous' problem: two studs skinny-dipping.

Just before the summer season starts for real, the veterans intensively train the recruits, including Blake who struggles with diving in Greg's team. The bathers enjoy a hot Christmas, but toasting with (banned) alcohol often bodes trouble. More routine rescues: Reidy cheerfully saves Asians tourists, twice in half an hour. The boys celebrate with bears afterward. Next Reidy faces his last fear: surfing huge waves, ably coached by Hoppo but lacking confidence.

Blake's first Bondi New Year is memorable- a streaker and a beach full of spaced-out people, so the boys check if it's just drunks or OD. The celebrities parade now includes self-made billionaire Richard Branson. More routine rescues. Someone fell from a 40 meter high cliff, a helicopter must help pick him up, amazingly with 'mere' multiple fractures. Agoraphobic Kerrbox chickens out of a 'slingshot'.

A sunny summer Sunday on Bondi attracts 30,000 bathers. Cory first removes a stingray from the children's pool. Rescues chain up on industrial scale, manpower just isn't enough, so the beach must be temporarily closed till the gentler tide. The police must help handle a fight among the generally unruly 'beached' crowd. Generally beloved Deano sneakily prepares a surprise proposal to his steady girlfriend while surfing.

On Australia Day, we consider what sassy behavior is Australian- on the beach, nearly everything goes. The annual Bondi swimming classic must be halted because of a swarm of poisonous jellyfish. When all senior colleagues are engaged elsewhere, 'cadet' Blake gets his first major solo rescue. The police is called to arrest a foreign beach thief, the boys make sure he can't escape first. A beached seas turtle is beyond rescue.

Everybody trains -even secretly every spare minute- for the Bondi Iron Man, which won't be canceled on account of stormy 'sharky' weather without a Jaws sighting. Meanwhile a beach ball game ended in a dislocated shoulder. Six drowning friends at once require three lifeguards, Blake does great again. The race is bitter but fair and funny, also on account of costumes, the only cheater is punished by fate. Finally there's a bet and a prank revenge.

Blake's family witnesses how well he does on the world's busiest beach. Despite routine rescues, the boys wonder and worry about an allegedly missing swimmer. Hours later his worried son (16) tells it's a recently immigrated Mongolian doctor aged 30. Even the police helicopter only 'signals' a shark. When he's finally found, it's just too late: the first fatal victim in 4 years.

The Bondi lifeguards train hard, hoping for a first-ever victory in the regional iron-man competition. The drowned Mongolian isn't digested yet either, yet even Reidi is back on duty within two days. A cardiac arrest patient is beached and fibrillated. Kerrbox joins a radio fating program, with a -willfully too- glowing recommendation from hottie Bishop. Bondi ends 3rd on 13 teams, everyone celebrated colleagually.

Kerrbox and two other champs demonstrate perfect surfing, bleeding tourists how painful the clumsy version can get. Reidy looses an unfair bet with Blake, his successor as newbie, about backward quad parking. A stormy shower cleans the beach faster then a shark alert. A boy brings in a near-drowned cat.

A few Britons show tourists can have more sense than the locals. In the prank war, Whippet and a whole Japanese camera crew convince Kerrbox that he has a spot in an energy drink commercial. However the fake name means something else entirely! Boys on duty find a poisonous black snake under beach rocks, a problem left to a new ranger. Blake is now graduating to multiple simultaneous rescues and even gets the highest daily record. Reidy has another go at braving high surf waves, pitilessly stirred by Corey - it works. Now the summer ends, the boys look back on a hard ...