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CAPTION:
The world’s largest island nation, Australia’s vast coastline and splendid beaches made surf swimming popular, though risky. The surf life-saving reel, designed by Lyster Ormsby, was first demonstrated on 23 December 1906 at Bondi Beach. Two weeks later it was first used to rescue two schoolboys swept out in a rip - twenty-two years later one of those boys, Charles Kingsford- Smith, made the first aeroplane flight across the Pacific Ocean.