It’s the lives they save that keep Bondi Beach lifeguards Hoppo and Kid going

Surprisingly, Bondi Rescue lifeguards don’t always get a thank you for saving someone’s life — but they wouldn’t be doing any other job.

THERE are a few non-negotiables when it comes to working as a lifeguard on Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach.

One: when you rock up for work you never know what’s going to happen.

Two: everyone has a nickname and once a moniker has been allocated it’s impossible to shake.

T hree: it doesn’t matter how close someone comes to losing their life, in most cases the person walks off, without a nod of thanks to the lifeguards who saved them.

Lifeguards Bruce “Hoppo” Hopkins, 49, and Jesse ‘Kid’ Pollock, 28, next week return to screens for the 13th season of Bondi Rescue — the hit TV show that takes viewers inside the daily lives of the men and women tasked with keeping Australia’s busiest beach safe.

Bondi Rescue boss Bruce 'Hoppo' Hopkins and young star Jesse ‘Kid’ Pollock are back for a new season.

The season opens on a tragic note, with Pollock facing one of the toughest scenarios a young lifeguard can face.

Despite “dead flat” conditions and waves that Pollack describes as “no bigger than a foot”, an American university professor is found unconscious, lying in the shallows of Bondi’s southern end.

“When we got there he was blue in the face and he wasn’t breathing,” Pollack tells BW Magazine.

“It was pretty dramatic. His wife was screaming and everyone was screaming.”

►Real life Bondi Rescue!

►Bondi Rescue episodes reduced for 13th season

►Bondi Rescue’s Dean Gladstone in ‘dark place’ after being king-hit

Pollack and his colleague Jake Nolan immediately began compressions on the man’s chest, trying to revive him as they waited for paramedics to arrive.

As they worked, thousands of beachgoers gathered around — a strange phenomenon the lifeguards refer to as the “ring of death”.

It took half an hour until the man had a pulse and could be transported to a waiting ambulance.

“He was just unlucky because it wasn’t a drowning,” says Hopkins, who has been a lifeguard at Bondi Beach for 26 years and with Bondi Rescue since its first episode.

He explains that a wave had knocked the man from his feet and caused him to fall on his head, snapping his neck instantly.

The Bondi backdrop just adds to the show’s appeal.

The lifeguards haven’t heard from the man or his wife since that fateful day but understand he is now a quadriplegic after suffering an injury similar to that which befell Superman actor, the late Christopher Reeve.

With more than a million tourists visiting Bondi each year, lifeguards have the added challenge of language difficulties and swimmers unfamiliar with Australian beach safety. “Sometimes you’ll be yelling at someone for 10 minutes, trying to get them away from a rip and then, when they finally get to shore, you realise they don’t speak a word of English,” says Pollack.

Despite the challenges and tragedy inherent in the job, the pay-off when a rescue goes well makes the tough times worth it.

In his almost three-decade-long career, Hopkins has lost count of the number of lives he’s potentially saved.

Selfies with tourists comes with the territory.

One moment does stand out. A few years ago the Bondi Beach lifeguards received a letter from a Northern Territory mother. The woman explained her two-year-old son had fallen in the backyard pool and nearly drowned.

She had no CPR training but was a fanatical Bondi Rescue viewer, and instinctively jumped in the pool, and rescued the boy by imitating the CPR techniques she had seen on TV.

“She just copied what we did on the show, it probably wasn’t 100 per cent right but enough to keep the kid alive until the paramedics got there,” says Hopkins.

“That’s the main reason I keep doing it. (With the show) we can entertain people but we’re also getting a surf safety message out there. If you can save people’s lives on a daily basis ... bringing them back to life in front of you, that’s quite an amazing thing.”

Bondi Rescue airs 7.30pm on Tuesday on Network Ten.