Gold Coast City Council: New warning signage to be installed at Robina’s Lake Orr

Fears of another fatal shark attack in a busy Gold Coast waterway has sparked a new safety response ahead of the busy summer season.

GOLD Coast City Council is urgently erectly signs to stop unassuming families from taking a dip in a shark hot spot.

Families who have moved into the Robina area have been spotted swimming in Lake Orr in the past three months.

The lake is a fishermen’s haven with hundreds of bull sharks being pulled from its waters.

A bull shark caught in Gold Coast waters.

Area councillor Hermann Vorster is urgently installing multiple new signs around the lake warning of the dangers which lurk underwater.

“I have been contacted by residents who have desperately tried to warn swimmers to get out of Lake Orr given they are shark-infested waters,” he said

Cr Hermann Vorster

“These people are taking their lives into their own hands by jumping into a waterway which is home to a significant bull shark population.

“These waterways have already claimed multiple lives and it is so important that new residents understand the deadly threat which lurks underneath these serene waters.”

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The location where one of the signs will be installed after people were spotted climbing into the water. Picture: Hermann Vorster

The signs will be manufactured at the council’s in-house sign shop and installed in coming weeks.

Lake Orr is a man-made lake which is part of the city’s waterways network.

It feeds into Lake Herron and Burleigh Lake as well as other canal estates through the central Gold Coast.

To the north it connects into the Nerang River Estuary and Broadwater through which sharks can travel.

Bull sharks have been responsible for two fatal attacks in Coast canals in the past two decades, and many of the sharks are more than 2.5m long.

Beau Martin, 23, died after being attacked by a bull shark in Miami Lake in December 2002, and Bob Purcell, 84, was killed the following year in Burleigh Lake.

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Cr Vorster is concerned about swimmers in waterways which are known to have a big bull shark population. Picture: Facebook

This latest safety push comes four years after the council last launched a campaign to improve safety on the canals.

In late 2014 the council installed 40 signs around the city’s waterways after reports emerged of bull sharks bumping into sailing boats on Lake Orr.