When will people realise its not safe to swim at night, not even in the day with this kind of weather!

With another student missing in a night time swim only weeks away, yet another. What are they thinking? As I watch Bondi Rescue on TV I admire the Surf Life Savers who give up their time to monitor the beach, and am exasperated by some of the thousands of beach goers that these few young men have to baby sit. Foreign visitors and students with little or no English language skills seem to form a sizeable portion of those rescued.

"Foreign visitors and students with little or no English language skills seem to form a sizeable portion of those rescued."... Did you just made that up?

That's a reasonable observation Fergie. Last year I was unfortunately at Bulli beach when a German tourist drowned after being caught in a rip. The truly unfortunate aspect of this incident was that he chose to enter the water about 100m away from where life guards were on duty, despite signs on all the entrances to Bulli beach warning swimmers to swim between the flags. But Australians who are not experienced beach goers are just as likely as foreigners to be rescued or drowned. So I don't believe it's a language issue, multi-lingual signs are not going to make the slightest difference. The real issue in my view is that the highly developed beach culture in this country conveys the impression to inexperienced beach goers that the beach is a benign place, because so many people are doing it. This biases the way they interpret the abundance of information about beach safety. So before the knee jerkers start calling for something to be done, realise that signs and publicity campaigns have little to no effectiveness in these matters. Lets not waste more public money for no reason. People are well informed about beach hazards and at the end of the day they have to be responsible for their own actions.

I would like to come to the defense of foreign visitors. I am a Canadian living permanently in Australia and I can say that people coming here to visit, particularly from countries with few beaches, do not understand the dangers of the ocean. Why would any visitor think that Bondi was dangerous when there are 20,000 people there having a great time? As far as the flags, most non-Aussies do not know what they represent. Maybe a quick video attached on to the quarantine videos when you fly in to the country could be useful. Some might say this is common sense, but consider this - my knowledge of avalanche safety would be considered common sense to most Canadians, yet of the dozens of Aussies I've surveyed, no one knew anything about avalanche safety . . . and why would they?

Why is the focus on foreign students, correct me if i am wrong but wasn't this man a student at Wollongong Uni, so surely he reads the papers or watches the news, he would be familiar with what has happened to Mr Koffa, i am sure common sense is world wide not just here, U JUST DON'T GO SWIMMING IN THE DARK. I don't go down there much so i am not aware if there are any signs erected warning people of the dangers of swimming at night.

When you attend a friend's funeral who was killed in a car accident due to their own reckless driving, do you blame them for their stupidity or do you offer your condolences? Please have some respect!

He could speak perfect english and i know tons of aussies at i house who have stupidly gone swimming at night so really it could have happened to anyone. I'm so sorry it was him tho. and i offer my condolences to everyone who knew him. he was an amazing gentlemen.

It sounds like Xenophopia dYa remember that?? Cmon Aussie be fair the poor guy was celebrating his birthday in the best beach country in the world. A Novelty for him. \give a guy a fair go

we should all show our sympathy to him, apart of what happened and why he went there. it's all about the past and no point of talking about that, so we must appear as considerate people at least for his folk who I'm one of them.

I do appreciate each one comments and advice and we could benefit of that, however, we may all visitors or citizenship be through that, so pray for him to be found alive. thanx to all