Swimmers have been urged to take greater care in the water in the festive period to prevent more holiday drowning tragedies.
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Albury and Border Rescue Squad captain Paul Marshall said Lake Hume and the Murray River had claimed the lives of too many people, many of whom were non-English speaking.
With this in mind, a plan to erect multilingual signs at popular swimming spots has been formulated.
"We contributed to the drowning prevention strategy for Albury Council and that's one of the recommendations in the proposal," Mr Marshall said.
"Most drownings in recent years have been people from overseas, we've had tragedies involving Nepalese, Bhutanese, Congolese people, an Iranian chap.
"So a lot of what we found is the drownings were international visitors or international students or workers.
"We need warning and advice signs to be multilingual because it wasn't just English-speaking Australians that were drowning."
Mr Marshall said the strategy had a range of options to be implemented.
"There's going to be more signage, some life buoys placed in strategic locations, more information, some emergency phones, some cameras," he said.
"It should get tabled next year to the council. After the last floods a lot of the signage needs to be replaced because it was damaged by the floods."
In the same year, Culcairn man Kade Sadler died after trying to retrieve his dog from the water at Lake Hume on Boxing Day and suffering a medical issue.
In 2021 on Christmas Day, 18-year-old Julius 'Jules' Lunanga, of Wodonga, drowned in the Murray River at Noreuil Park.
In 2017, a Wodonga boy, 8, was dragged from the water at Kookaburra Point after he had gone missing while swimming for about 10 minutes. He died at the site.
Meanwhile, Ambulance Victoria says it will boost its capability in the Hume region's tourist towns by arranging additional resources until early January.
Acting Hume director of clinical operations Stuart Reid said drownings and heat stroke were key issues over the break.
"We'll see a great deal of holidaymakers and travellers venture through these communities over the coming weeks," he said.
"Locally we often see an increase in inland water incidents as well as cases resulting from the higher temperatures.
"We work hard to ensure we can continue to provide best care and timely responses to those who need us during these busy periods."
