Cold Nips is covering the full cost. In return we get people who can genuinely look after our community in the water, every Wednesday, all summer.
From 18 November to 31 March, Cold Nips runs a free morning session on Scarborough Beach every single Wednesday, 5.00am to 6.30am. Movement, then connection, then the cold water.
Looking after that many people properly takes trained eyes on the water. We'd rather that came from inside our own community: people who know the group, know the beach, and are there every week anyway.
A pool swim, completed before training starts on Saturday 10 October. If you can't do it yet, you've got three weeks to train for it. But it's a hard gate, and there's no way around it.
We'd love to have you. Before you put your hand up though, go and have a proper look at your summer. We need you for most of the 20 Wednesdays, and ideally all of them. Christmas, January, work trips, all of it. It is so much better to know now than in February.
And if the dates do work, you're in for a lot more than a course. There's the season itself, the five ticketed events, things we run in the off-season, and whatever we get up to next year. We're building a volunteer crew that sticks around, not a one-off group for one summer.
We're a small charity paying $330 a head out of money we don't really have, because having our own people trained is worth it to us. So all we ask is that you're straight with us.
The Bronze Medallion is the benchmark qualification for surf lifesavers in Australia. It is not a short course, and people do drop out.
Delivered by accredited Surf Life Saving WA trainers at Scarboro Surf Life Saving Club, the course covers surf awareness, survival skills, patrol and rescue procedures, emergency care, and anatomy and physiology.
You won't be in a Cold Nips-only group. You'll train alongside Scarboro club members doing their own Bronze, which is a good way to learn it.
It's a qualification you keep. It works on any beach in the country.
This is the beginning of the Cold Nips volunteer community, and you'd be the first ten in it. Crew are in the briefings, know the facilitators, and have a say in how the mornings actually run. It's a completely different relationship to standing in the crowd.
Ten people doing something hard together, at 4.30am, every week, for a summer. That tends to turn into something. We want you in it for the long run, not just for the qualification.
The club normally caps these courses at 15 or 16 people. They're bringing in extra trainers to fit our volunteers in, so the places are real but they're limited.
If you'd like to become a member of Scarboro and patrol with them as well, they've offered to reduce or waive the annual membership fee in exchange for 32 hours of patrol across the season, roughly October to March.
That's entirely separate from what Cold Nips is asking of you. Take it or leave it. It won't affect your place either way.
We need your name by Friday 2 October. Fill this in and we'll be in touch for a chat. Nothing is locked in by sending it. We're after ten people.