It wasn’t till 1 July 1980 that Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) allowed women to become active surf lifesavers. At Coogee Beach on 19 October ’80, in front of a panel of examiners from Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club (BSBLSC), the four members of the club’s about to be first female Bronze Squad passed muster, on their second attempt. Those first ever female patrolling members were Terri Corbett, Susan Murray, Sue McGilvray and Julie Blacker.

Terri remembers hearing, in late ’79, that surf clubs were opening up to women. She’d grown up on the New South Wales mid-north coast and been a member of the Mermaid program – the region’s version of a Nipper program, for girls – being run by Taree Old Bar Surf Life Saving Club. After that initiation, the club’s officials had permitted her to compete in its weekend surf races but had disallowed her from standing in the lifesavers’ line or starting on the correct side of the beach flag and had insisted she wear her lifesaver’s cap inside out so as not to have her results recorded.

Terri decided to move to Sydney to take up an apprenticeship, find friends to hang out with and get involved in some sort of activity. In her words, “I was 20 and living in Coogee and approached the club there first, then Clovelly and Bronte, only to be told by all of them that girls weren’t allowed – so, that was how I came to walk into Bondi and meet club captain Phil Easson. Phil was very excited for Bondi to have the credit for getting the first female Bronze Squad through in Australia; he just had to find three other girls to train in order to be ready for October.”

It turned out that plenty of other men in clubs throughout Australia were on the same page as Phil’s. Terri says, “It was still the boy’s club,” and believes that despite all Phil’s and other club members’ good intentions, BSBLSC wasn’t yet ready to admit women to its ranks. “They didn’t really know what to do with us – as much as they wanted to,” she explains. “I really felt the need to prove myself to the old guys. This was the days before ‘OH&S’, and I might’ve injured myself a few times trying to prove I was just as strong and just as good.”

Terri went on to gain her Instructor’s Certificate, in March 1981, and to win the point score in that season’s Dr Farraridge Memorial Surf Race. After she performed her first rescue, club stalwart Alf Vockler was quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Column 8’ as saying, “I was opposed to women in the surf club at first, but now I have to take my hat off to her. We may even have women Icebergs next.”

The following year, Terri left Sydney and BSBLSC because of work commitments. Life took over, and she became busy with work and family, but in 2000, she returned to surf lifesaving, at Northcliffe SLSC, as a masters competitor.

Courtesy Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club.