(JESSE on the BRINK) Safety First!

by Jesse Archer

Just TRY drowning!! Or stepping on a blue-ringed octopus, or swimming outside the flags... because guess who's North Bondi's newest lifeguard!!??

After months of training on CPR, First Aid, boards plus loads of Run-swim-runs and signals, I finally got my certificate and join the rest of my amazing squad of Bronze Medallion lifesavers! Huge thanks to our incredible and incredibly patient trainers Drew, Jodie, Rhys and Rhys! Season is over, but I start patrolling next summer... Is your faith restored in the safety of Sydney's beaches?

ceremony inside the clubhouse. Those windows look like paintings!

PLUS....
I wrote a huge feature on a forty year old mass murder case of Juan Corona for DNA magazine,
The Machete Murders of Sutter County. This was the very first serial killer case in the USA, and its magnitude totally swamped the small town Northern California sheriffs department which kept digging up more and more bodies in the local orchards. The case also had strange gay subplots, like the victims (mainly alcoholic day laboring "fruit tramps") buried with their pants pulled around their ankles and a defense which, pathologizing homosexuality, kept on blaming Juan's gay brother - even though he was in Mexico at the time of the murders. I spent a lot of time researching the case and haven't seen another story as up to date - and the now-demented convicted killer's recent parole-seeking confession gives it all a chilling finality.

Check it out in issue #170 -- plus my recap of the dizzying, dazzling Tropical Fruits NYE festival.