Pittwater Life Febraury 2024 Issue

Rob reflects on his 30
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Robert Hopton was 35 years old when
he and his wife Christine moved to
Avalon Beach, quickly establishing a
home and having three children. As each
of their three daughters turned six years
old, they signed them up to Nippers, while
Rob and Christine themselves became
involved as supportive parents.
Rob’s more than 30-year association
with the Avalon Beach Surf Life Saving
Club was formally recognised last October
when he was awarded Life Membership of
the Club plus the joint Pittwater 2023 Community
Service Award for his volunteer
efforts.
The awards are given out annually by
Pittwater’s local MP; this year Rory Amon
announced Rob and Judy Kelly, 87, who
volunteers with the CatholicCare Diocese
of Broken Bay’s Aged Care Volunteer Visitors
scheme, as the 2023 winners.
Now aged 72, Rob says the main reason
he loves surf life saving is the friendships,
the activity, the water – and because the
beach is a “real leveller” attracting people
from all walks of life.
“The beach is a very big part of our
Australian cultural psyche, a common
denominator in our society,” he said.
Rob recalls a few years ago during the
annual inflatable rescue boat refresher
course, an 18-year-old club member instructed
a group of other members on the
correct way to operate the boat and how to
strip down the motor and get it operational
again if you were unfortunate enough to
dunk it in the ocean.
The group included an airline pilot, a sea
captain, the CEO of a large company and
Rob himself, a director of a large international
architectural practice.
“Here we were, standing around asking
him detailed questions. It was a classic
example of how age, outside experience
and status meant nothing in this moment
and he was the expert, not us, and we were
hanging on everything he said.”
For eight years, Rob was an ‘age manager’
at Avalon Beach SLSC, committed to
spending his Sunday mornings in the surf;
training Nippers aged 6-12, Cadets under
14 and then older teenagers working to
obtain their Bronze Medallion.
Rob got his own Bronze Medallion in
2001 and joined the ranks of the club’s
active surf life savers.
He’s three times been awarded the Avalon
SLSC President’s award (in 2013, 2014
and 2021). In 2007, he received the Norman
Cook award for the Most Outstanding
Member of the Year and in 2017, the Order
of Avalon Medal (with wife Christine and
Richard Cole) for the delivery of the new
Club House and the Meritorious Services
Award in 2022.
In his two decades of life saving, he
recalls one particularly intense weekend in
2022 when he was on beach duty. “There’s
the beach and there’s a sandbar and a gutter
between the beach and the sandbar,”
he says.
“On that day, there was a huge current
going through the gutter from north to
south. And so people were getting ripped
off the sand. We rescued about 80 people
and a couple of those were kids that really
needed to be grabbed quickly and dragged
in. And we probably stopped another couple
hundred from also hurting themselves.
One family of kids we rescued two or three
times.”
On Australia Day in 2010, Rob was part
of a team rescuing a man who had too
many celebratory drinks and fell off the
cliff on the Southern Headland of Avalon
Beach onto the rocks below. He was lucky
to survive without spinal or head injuries,
Rob says, but broke his pelvis, ribs, leg and
arm.
“What always amazes me is the number
of people and rescue services that can
come together because of one person. On
that occasion, there were three police cars,
four paramedics, ambulances, two fire
brigade trucks and a helicopter – and us,
the surf lifesavers.”
For their efforts, Hopton and his fellow
life savers won Surf Life Saving New South
Wales ‘Rescue of the Month’.
As well as saving lives, Rob has drawn
26 FEBRUARY 2024
The Local Voice Since 1991