It looks like the idyllic "out of town" beach set against for the most part picturesque greenery with a scenic road winding beyond. And in some respects it is. However this beach turned deadly yesterday, as many of them can.

As you can probably tell from the amount of foam, conditions were relatively rough today but they were far rougher yesterday. A group of swimmers was standing on a sandbar off the beach when pounding by the powerful waves caused the bar to collapse, thus creating a rip and sucking the swimmers out to sea.

A 63 year old man holidaying from Perth died, a 20 year old suffered a heart attack, and a few people ranging from a 15 year old girl to a 30 year old woman had to be hospitalised for respiratory distress and water ingestion.

No matter how pretty it looks at times or how wonderful the photos it can provide are or how necessary it is to life on Earth... the sea is not your friend and needs to be treated with a great deal of respect.

I had actually hoped to get onto the beach to take some shots but I was running well over an hour late as it was, so I had to take this from Stanwell Tops which overlooks the beach.