Risk-taking young men who drown trying to swim Melbourne’s Yarra river are making it the deadliest inland river per metre in Australia.
New data shows alcohol, drugs, tourists and young men who dare each other to swim the river are contributing to regular drownings.
Royal Life Saving figures released on Thursday show 37 drownings have occurred in the 242km Yarra waterway in the past 15 years.
The 2,508km Murray river had 70 deaths over the same period, despite being 10 times longer than the Yarra.
“What we’re seeing is alcohol as the main contributor, and that young male risk-taker,” a Life Saving Victoria spokesman, Paul Shannon, told ABC Radio on Thursday.
“People daring each other to swim across the water ... it’s actually illegal to swim in the Yarra river in the CBD. [They] think it is benign but the currents, visibility and what’s underneath … contribute to that tragic loss of life.”
The Respect the River report found 81% of river drowning deaths involved men, most frequently between the ages of 25 and 34, and drugs or alcohol were found their system in 51% of cases.
Almost three-quarters of drownings were locals living within a 100km radius of their home, the report also found.
But Shannon stated, to his knowledge, many Yarra river drownings in the Melbourne city centre were travellers from outside the area. “They’re either international tourists or interstate tourists who really just don’t have that awareness,” he said.
“That it is a tidal river, that it is dirty, that it is cold … that there are unknown branches and twigs and holes and currents that you can’t see that make it so dangerous.”