Geoff Hutchinson has taken out Ballina Shire’s Citizen of the Year Award for his exceptional service, leadership and dedication as a volunteer with Marine Rescue Ballina, saving lives on local waterways.
The citation said Mr Hutchinson was known for his calm, professional approach and extensive maritime experience. ‘He responds at any hour, often in challenging and dangerous sea conditions. His integrity, reliability and selfless commitment have earned him deep respect across Marine Rescue NSW.’
In the last twelve months, he’s personally attended 37 rescues and assists, including 10 searches for missing persons or vessels. The Echo caught up with him yesterday to find out more.
Originally from Sydney, Geoff Hutchinson explained he’s been with Marine Rescue Ballina for five and a half years. His brother Paul is a well-known surfboard shaper in Byron Bay, and Geoff has a background in electronics, with extensive sailing experience, including thousands of miles doing yacht racing and yacht deliveries around the Pacific.
Big bad Ballina bar
The Ballina bar’s got a pretty fearsome reputation. Is that well deserved, or do people exaggerate about the dangers of the bar?
‘Not at all. It is one of the worst on the whole coast. Probably the next bad one would be Narooma, but Ballina is definitely dangerous,’ said Geoff Hutchinson. ‘Since 1840, there’s been 90 historical shipwrecks on the bar and 141 maritime incidents. Just a week ago, a boat tipped over on the bar.’
Were you on duty that day? I was, yeah. I went out on the jet boat with Mark Puglisi. Luckily, the Surf Life Saving had picked up two of the fishermen, and the third one was picked up by a surfer who bought him ashore.
‘They’d been out fishing and coming back from Byron, they’d had trouble with their throttle. On the bar they couldn’t get enough power on and got rolled over.’
So are most of the maritime problems you see avoidable, or accidents that people couldn’t have prepared for?
‘Some of them are accidents. But I mean, everybody makes a decision – the captain of the boat makes the decision whether to cross the bar or not, and if you’re not experienced, you shouldn’t be out there. But those three blokes were very experienced, so that was a mechanical failure that brought them undone.’
Angry beast
Geoff Hutchinson said, ‘The bar is an angry beast. It can be beautiful and smooth in the morning, like it was that Sunday when they went out fishing. But coming back, there was a ground swell pushing in, and soon as the tide turned it, it stood up and got very ugly.’
So is the jet boat an important part of Marine Rescue’s operation now?
‘Oh, definitely, yeah, it’s a white water boat, and our other boats aren’t white water boats at all. It fills a gap in that breaking wave situation in the bar. We back up Surf Life Saving and they back us up in that situation. We’re all in there for the one good, and that’s saving people’s lives.
‘It’s not about who’s going to get the accolades and who’s going to get the glory. It’s about saving lives. So that’s what we’ve got to remember. And you know, when I’ve done some rescues, the people that I’m rescuing may not have made the best decisions, but I can’t let myself think about that while the situation’s happening.
‘It just mars your judgment. So as far as I’m concerned, they’re just a person in the water that needs help, and that’s what we’re there to do.’
Big commitment
Mr Hutchinson says he puts anything from 2-5 days a week into his work with Marine Rescue Ballina, all voluntary, as part of a team of locals.
‘Most of us are retired. Some aren’t – they have to still work. But I’m retired, so I’ve made that commitment to support the community, so that’s what we do.’
Can you tell us about some of the other memorable rescues you’ve been involved with over the years?
‘The three o’clock in the morning call. That’s always really difficult. The SMS wakes you up, and you look at it, and it goes, “assist urgent vessel sinking offshore, people in the water”. So we get the initial information, which gets us active and down to the boat. The adrenaline’s running at that stage, and then we start collecting the information of whereabouts, and start heading out to the bar.
‘If it’s at night time, we can’t go fast, because in Ballina, you might have flood runout, or there might be people fishing in the middle of the river with no lights on. We’ve got to go reasonably slow at night going out, but once we get offshore, we can put the speed up a bit, but it takes the time.
‘The trawler that was sinking at three o’clock in the morning, it was six miles off Lennox Head, so yeah. By the time we got there, the guys had left the boat. It was still afloat, but very low in the water, and they were in the life raft, so we picked them up out of that. The boat sunk very quickly after that.’
Training for emergencies
So regardless of weather conditions, you guys just have to go, and deal with whatever’s happening. That must be very challenging?
‘It is, yeah. It’s our decision whether we cross the bar or not, but we’re trying to do that. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of bar crossings in all sorts of conditions, and we train to cross the bar and at night, which is very difficult,’ said Mr Hutchinson.
‘There have times that we’ve gone out with two and a half, three, four meter seas breaking wall to wall, and we go out at night time because somebody needs assistance.’
Has there ever been a case where Marine Rescue itself has gone into difficulties and needed help?
‘Years ago, 1983, one of our rescue vessels overturned in the bar. They were assisting a boat that was trying to come in and got into trouble on the bar. They were trying to tow it, and got the tow rope around the propeller. Both boats rolled over, and then the jet boat, which wasn’t Marine Rescue then, it was Surf Life Saving, came out and rescued everyone. Mark Puglisi came out and rescued all of the people. He had eight people in the jet boat.
‘He made a decision that he couldn’t come across the bar with that many people in the boat, and some were starting to show signs of hypothermia, so he took it in and beached it at Shelly Beach.’
As well as his work with Marine Rescue Ballina, Geoff Hutchinson is a keen wildlife photographer. One highlight he remembers is putting cameras on a white bellied sea eagle’s nest in Sydney Olympic Park, back in 2009.
‘We did that with Bird Life Australia, and it’s still running today. We beam it out to the internet and millions of people have viewed it.’
In recent years he and his wife have also managed trips to the Arctic and Antarctic. You can see some of Geoff’s wildlife and adventure photos on Facebook, here.
Radio operators and how to help
As far as his latest award goes, Mr Hutchinson wanted to pay tribute to the rest of the volunteer team at Marine Rescue Ballina, particularly the radio operators.
‘They’re always there. They don’t get much of a shout out, and they’re there while we go out at three o’clock in the morning.
‘They come into the radio base and look after us. They’re our lifeline. They do four hour shifts. During normal hours, we’re sometimes also looking after Brunswick, Byron, Evans Head, Iluka, Yamba…’
Everyone across the region is indebted to you guys, so what can the public do to help?
‘Come to the barbecues! There’s one on this coming Sunday morning, at the tower. Or come and volunteer. You don’t have to have any particular expertise, or any marine experience. We can train you in all of that. It doesn’t matter if you can give one hour a week or a month,’ said Geoff Hutchinson.
‘If you’re just about to retire, don’t wait until you retire. Come in and join up now and just slowly introduce yourself into the system. We train you, and it’s a great family, the whole Marine Rescue team.’
Feeling inspired? You can find out more and become a volunteer at Marine Rescue NSW’s webpage, here.
The Facebook page for the organisation is another way to get in touch, here.
Geoff Hutchinson has also recently written and published a comprehensive maritime history of Ballina (‘440 pages, two kilos of book!’) with a particular focus on the Richmond River bar, called Shipwrecked.
He’ll be signing books at the BBQ this Sunday morning, with all proceeds apart from GST going to support the work of Marine Rescue.
You can find the Ballina Marine Rescue tower at the end of Lighthouse Parade, on the North Wall at Ballina.
The fundraising BBQ will be happening from 7-11am, with tours of the Marine Rescue radio facility happening all morning for those interested in learning more.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
