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Brooke Sylvester

Brooke Sylvester

Founder of First Nations Lifeguards, a Bundjalung Saltwater person and Indigenous filmmaker dedicated to water safety and cultural reconnection for Aboriginal youth on Australia's Gold Coast.

Jun 25, 2026

4:10
First Nations Lifeguards, how did it, the program begin? What need did the program address? What makes the program different from other traditional water safety things? And let's just start with that.
4:27
Yeah, um, First Nations Lifeguards started because, um, after many years of working as a water cameraman myself on shows like Bondi Rescue for 11 years and, mm, early days as a water cameraman on the ASP tour, me and Zane have both been to Hawaii.
4:43
Um, I've been there a few times filming in the water.
4:46
Um, so we, we, we know the waterways that you're talking about.
4:50
Um, the, uh, connection for us with First Nations Lifeguards was after doing so much time on the coastlines, um, we started to realize that our people didn't really have a big presence there.
5:02
So we wanted to start like a, um, training academy so we can, um, get the, uh, indigenous, um, crew, um, all, uh, trained up and get them, um, some RTO-approved certification so they could actually work on the waterways around Australia.
5:19
And, uh, that's sort of like our, our mission, um, to, uh, to bring our people back to our waterways because, you know, we di- we didn't have a big presence there and at the moment.

5 MINS LATER

10:47
Go ahead

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