A 13-year-old boy swam for four hours through rough waters to raise the alarm after his mother and younger siblings were swept kilometres out to sea.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Austin Appelbee had no idea whether his family were still alive when he finally reached shore in Western Australia, having been separated from them during what became a 10-hour ordeal.
His mother Joanne, meanwhile, feared her decision to send her eldest son for help might have cost him his life.
The family had been holidaying at Quindalup, around 250 kilometres south of Perth, and headed into the water with two paddleboards and a kayak on what was supposed to be a short family outing.
They had planned to spend around an hour on the water and hadn’t brought food or drinks with them.
Conditions soon changed dramatically.
“The wind picked up and it went from there,” Joanne told BBC News. “We lost oars, and we drifted out further…. It kind of all went wrong very, very quickly.”
As the family were pushed further from shore, Joanne realised somebody needed to get help.
She couldn’t leave Beau, 12, and Grace, eight, so she made the agonising decision to send Austin.
“One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make was to say to Austin, ‘Try to get to shore and get some help, this could get really serious really quickly,'” she told ABC.net. “I knew he was the strongest and he could do it.
“I would have never went because I wouldn’t have left the kids at sea, so I had to send somebody.”
Austin initially set off using the kayak, but it was taking on water and repeatedly flipping in the increasingly difficult conditions.
“I started paddling to shore on the kayak […] but it kept taking on water and I was fighting rough seas and then I thought I saw something in the water and I was really scared,” he told ABC.
He eventually abandoned the kayak and began swimming the remaining four kilometres to shore.
Austin also ditched his life jacket after finding it was impeding his swimming.
By this point, he had lost sight of his family completely.
For the next two hours, the 13-year-old focused on prayer, Christian songs, and positive thoughts as he battled towards land.
“I was thinking about mum, Beau and Grace. I was also thinking about my friends and my girlfriend – I have a really good bunch of friends,” he told BBC News.
Speaking to ABC, he recalled trying to block out anything that might make the situation more frightening.
“I was trying to get the happiest things in my head, and trying to make it through, [and not think of] the bad things that will distract me,” he said. “And at this time, you know, the waves are massive, and I have no life jacket on […] I just kept thinking ‘just keep swimming, just keep swimming.
“And then I finally made it to shore, and I hit the bottom of the beach, and I just collapsed.”
Austin had spent around four hours making his way back to land.
“When I hit the floor I thought, how am I on land right now – is this a dream?” he told BBC News.
But reaching the beach wasn’t the end of his task.
Austin said he ran roughly another two kilometres to the family’s accommodation, found his mother’s phone and contacted emergency services.
“I said, ‘I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats, my family’s out at sea.’ I was very calm about it,” he told ABC.
The call triggered a major search operation involving WA Water Police, a rescue helicopter and Naturaliste Marine Rescue.
Austin then passed out and was taken to hospital, still unaware of whether his family had survived.
Out at sea, Joanne’s fears were moving in the opposite direction.
As darkness arrived without any sign of rescue, she became increasingly convinced Austin hadn’t made it.
“I had assumed Austin hadn’t made it,” she told BBC News.
Joanne, Beau and Grace had remained together on the paddleboards as they drifted further offshore, eventually reaching around 14 kilometres from the coast.
“We kept positive, we were singing, and we were joking and […] we were treating it as a bit of a game until the sun started to go down, and that’s when it was getting very choppy [with] very big waves,” Joanne told ABC. “As the sun went down, I thought something’s gone terribly wrong here and my fear was that [Austin] didn’t make it.
“Then, as it got darker, yeah, I thought there was no one coming to save us.
“We were cold, we were shaking, and Beau had lost feeling in his legs.”
Joanne said she eventually reached the point where she was mentally preparing for the possibility that they would not survive.
“It was the end, it was definitely the end,” she told ABC. “My Mum is in Ireland […] I remember looking up at the sky, going, ‘Mum, if you can hear me, just light that holy candle for me.'”
Around five minutes before rescuers reached them, another wave threw Beau and Grace from their paddleboard and separated them from their mother.
“Towards the end, a big wave hit all of a sudden, and my little sister and I were like on a weird angle, and it flipped us off, and we floated away from Mum,” Beau told ABC.
When the rescue boat arrived, Joanne could hear Grace screaming but initially couldn’t hear Beau.
“When the boat came and picked me up, and I screamed at them that there were two kids [still] in the water […] I called for Grace, and I could hear her, and I still couldn’t hear Beau,” Joanne said. “I called out to kill the engine, and all of a sudden, I heard this little voice … and we picked them up, and it was the best feeling in the world.
“But I still didn’t know about Austin […] So it was very, very frightening.”
All three were eventually rescued at around 8:30PM.
Back at hospital, Austin was facing the same terrifying uncertainty.
“I realised they were gone, I thought they were dead,” he told ABC. “I had a lot of guilt in my heart. I thought, ‘Oh man, I wasn’t fast enough.'”
Minutes later, he received confirmation that his mother, brother and sister had been found alive.
“It was a moment I will never forget,” Austin told BBC News.
All four family members were treated following the ordeal.
Austin was left with legs so sore that he was using crutches, while Joanne, Beau and Grace suffered swollen legs, blisters, bruising and a rash from repeatedly getting on and off the paddleboard.
Despite widespread praise for his actions, Austin rejected the idea that he should be considered a hero.
“I didn’t think I was a hero – I just did what I did”, he told the BBC.
Naturaliste Volunteer Marine Rescue Group commander Paul Bresland described the teenager’s efforts as “superhuman”, while Insp James Bradley said his actions “cannot be praised highly enough – his determination and courage ultimately saved the lives of his mother and siblings”.
For Joanne, however, the outcome was considerably simpler.
“I have three babies. All three of them made it. That was all that mattered,” she told ABC.
Featured image credit: YouTube/ABC Australia/AMSA (screenshots)
