Canberra’s lack of a beach (Kambah Pool doesn’t count) hasn’t stopped 50 Canberra families from joining a surf lifesaving club and adopting the Batemans Bay Nippers as their own.

Last summer, there were 170 registrations for Batemans Bay Nippers and of those, 100 were from Canberra. Every second Sunday, from 10am to 12 midday, they train at Malua Bay.

On a windy day, Lake Burley Griffin can get a half-metre swell but that’s not enough for surf lifesavers, so Wright resident and former competitive surf lifesaver, Rhys Davies, runs coastal sessions for 50 Canberra families.

“When I first moved to Canberra [from the UK], I used to train at Lake Ginninderra because I wasn’t able to train weekdays at Batemans Bay,” Rhys said, who used to compete for Britain and Wales.

“I would use my surf-ski on the lake because the water quality is pretty good and it’s got a few good beaches. On the surf-ski, I’d paddle between 14 to 20 kilometres a few times a week around Lake Gininderra to keep my fitness and competitiveness up, ready to go down to the beach.”

But you can’t beat the real thing, so three years ago, Rhys started the Batemans Bay Nippers program at Malua Bay.

“I’ve done surf lifesaving since I was six years old and when I came over, I joined the Batemans Bay club and I’ve been a patrolling member there since 2011,” Rhys said. “We’ve got 40 to 50 Canberra families that come down with their kids and with the Canberra contingent, we’re not strict like some of the other clubs, we’re quite flexible. We don’t mandate that they have to come down every weekend, but some families do – including myself. Most families do alternate weekends.”

With Batemans Bay virtually a satellite suburb of Canberra, many Canberran Nippers have holiday accommodation there so it’s a great excuse to go. Rhys has a caravan that he tows down for the weekend and he also tows his three kids to Nippers – Archie (3), Cerys (6) and Jaxton (9).

Most Surf Life Saving clubs run Nippers programs for under 14s, however Batemans Bay Nippers also runs an under-fives program. Rhys even has two-year-olds in his training session.

“We try and make it as fun as possible for them,” Rhys said. “But at that age it’s more about familiarisation with the beach so they won’t even touch the water. What we try to do by the end of the season is get that confidence level up, so when they are on the beach with mum and dad, they’re happy to stand in the shallow waters and play in the sand close to the ocean, but also have a bit of understanding of what the risks and dangers are. Even at that age, they do take in quite a lot of knowledge.”

With the small tots and their small attention spans, training sessions don’t run for the full two hours, but rather 45 minutes to an hour. For older kids (age 6 or 7) there is also a sport (swimming) and fitness element to the education.

“We try to slot in education around the beach conditions,” Rhys said. “For example, if we’re going to do a swim activity, we get that age group to point out where they think the rips are, where they think the dangers are on the beach, whether they can use those dangers to their advantage. If they’re decent swimmers, they might decide to use the rip to their advantage to get out. Some activities will see them swim anywhere between 200 meters to 600 meters if they’re competent swimmers.”

Rhys has tried to utilise Canberra’s pools for additional training during the week but was unable due to availability. He also considered using Canberra’s artificial lakes but was again unable due to poor water quality.

“From a fitness perspective, training on flat water is quite beneficial,” he said. “If our nippers get confident enough, I hope one day I could arrange training sessions on Canberra’s lakes if they have their own equipment.”

With two-thirds of Batemans Bay Nippers membership being Canberran, I asked Rhys if it should be named the Canberra Nippers.

“We don’t separate them; we just call it Batemans Bay Nippers, and that’s intentional because I want to maintain cohesiveness and unity as one club, without creating any friction between us, especially between Canberra and the Bay.”

Batemans Bay Nippers is on Facebook.