Tomlins’ top honour

A WALLINGTON local has been lauded for his commitment to aquatic safety and celebrated for his close to 50 years in the Australian Coast Guard.

Gary Tomlins was presented with National Board of Coast Guard Life Membership and an 800 rescues certificate at Coast Guard Queenscliff’s 49th annual dinner and service awards.

His contributions to the organisation have been monumental and included multiple terms as flotilla commander, flotilla and squadron training officer, acting advisor to the Water Police and much more.

Tomlins first had interest in joining the Coast Guard in 1975 and undertook a seamanship course with the organisation in Geelong.

Alongside his father, the pair improved their skills through vigorous training and in 1976 joined the Geelong branch where they would stay for 10 years.

Tomlins would go on to move to the Queenscliff branch in 1986, where he still works to this day.

“I’ve always just had a passion for boats, and it’s a great distraction,” he said.

“I don’t fish, and it’s a good excuse to play boats!

“Most of it is good, you’re with good people and you’re helping the public and doing good community service.”

Tomlins said day-to-day tasks can be quite broad in the Coast Guard, and that no day is ever the same.

“It might be knots in the sheds, or mooring and docking, navigation, radio training and more.

“We have direct lines with Victoria Police who coordinate all sea rescues in the state. They will call us up and see if we are available to do any jobs.

“Out of hours, we’ve got pagers and radios which they ring us and contact our duty officer, and we can then go straight to the boat.”

During his 49 years serving the community, there have been many unique rescues which stand out in his memory.

“Going backwards, I wasn’t involved, but in March we had 17 swimmers and kayaks washed out through Port Phillip Heads. That was a combined effort between surf life saving clubs, Water Police and us,” he said.

“Prior to that between Christmas and New Year’s, the Water Police contacted us and said we’ve got a report of help being called at Point Lonsdale. History says there was four people in a 6m vessel… boat rolled over… three were in water with life jackets, one wasn’t… they were non-English speaking… we came back in here to the ambulance and asked who speak Cantonese… we then found out three people were still out there! An outbound ship located two, we went and picked them up and the helicopter got the other.”

“This year though we’ve done 93 jobs overall and that’s a combination of the two described earlier, but many are also flat battery, out of fuel, engine won’t start, first aid for people on the walking track, searches for EPIRB’s and more.”

Tomlins said the ever-changing nature of his work is what has kept him in the force for such a long period of time.

“There’s always something different happening.”