Swimmers drown in Australian rip-tide

A British tourist and an Australian have drowned after being caught in a rip-tide at a surfers' beach in Queensland.

The 43-year-old Briton has been named by police as Raymond Andrew Marshall, from Strood, Kent.

He was swimming with his wife at Mermaid Beach, on the Gold Coast, when they and the 33-year-old local man Arthur Lloyd Skellern got into difficulties with strong currents.

Surfers helped the woman to safety and alerted lifeguards, who brought the two men back to the beach unconscious.

Attempts at resuscitation failed and they were taken to the Gold Coast Hospital but were pronounced dead on arrival, the Queensland Police Service said.

Currents

Post-mortem examinations are being carried out on the men.

The trio were first spotted in trouble about 1430 local time on Saturday, about 200m outside a flagged, unsupervised area of the beach.

George Hill, of Surf Lifesaving Queensland, told the Sunday Mail newspaper in Queensland the swimmers had been caught in a bad rip-tide, which occurs when currents move against each other.

He told the Sunday Mail newspaper in Queensland that the deaths were a warning about swimming in unsupervised areas.

A police spokeswoman said earlier: "It was a beautiful sunny day here yesterday but it shows that you never can quite tell with the tide."

Three other people were caught in another rip-tide near the same spot about one-and-a-half hours later, she added.