A 13-year-old boy is hitting headlines worldwide after he heroically swam for hours in order to save his family, who had been swept out to sea.
Austin Applebee (13) swam for hours in cold and hazardous waters off south-west Australia after inflatable paddle boards and a kayak he, his mum, and younger siblings were using were swept out by strong winds off Geographe Bay.
Speaking to 7 News Australia, the brave boy said he was praying to God as he raced against time to reach the shore and get help.
“I don’t think it was actually me [swimming]… It was God the whole time.” he said.
“I kept on praying, kept on praying. I said to God, ‘I’ll get baptised,” said Austin, describing his experience as “the waves are massive” and “I have no life jacket on”.
As he began to feel the physical burden of his marathon task, the teen told himself, “Not today, not today, not today, I have to keep on going.”
“I just kept thinking ‘just keep swimming, just keep swimming,'” he said. “And then I finally made it to shore, and I hit the bottom of the beach, and I just collapsed.”
Mum Joanne Appelbee, who is originally from County Monaghan, said one of the hardest decisions of her life was sending Austin to shore. “One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make was to say to Austin: ‘Try and get to shore and get some help. This could get really serious really quickly,'” she recalled.
After Austin headed for the shore in a kayak, the vessel began to take on water, and he was forced to swim the remaining 4km to reach dry land.
“I knew it would be a long way, but the kayak kept taking on water,” he said. “I was fighting rough seas, the kayak dumped me a million times, I thought I saw something in the water and I was really scared but I was just thinking I was going to make it.”
“After two hours, I removed the life jacket to help me swim more efficiently,” he said.
During his struggle forwards the brave teen says he switched between backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle swimming to conserve energy.
“At one point I was thinking about Thomas the Tank Engine, just trying to get the happiest things in my head,” he told ABC.
“I was very puffed out, but I couldn’t feel how tired I was,” he said. Thoughts of his girlfriend also kept him afloat:
“She gave me her hair lackeys [ties] and I was just looking at that the whole time.”
After finally reaching the shore, Austin says he collapsed on the sand and that there was nobody around to help, which forced him to run a further two kilometres in search of a phone to raise the alarm.
“Finally I just made it to shore and I hit the bottom of the beach and I just collapsed and then after that, I had to sprint two kilometres to get to the phone,” he said.
Austin says that when he reached the shore “there were a lot of foreign people, and I couldn’t get much help,”.
“I called 000 and … I said ‘I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats, my family’s out at sea.’ I was very calm about it. I think it was just a lot of shock.”
Just after 8:30pm Joanna and Austin’s siblings, Beau (11) and Grace (8) years were found by emergency services clinging to paddle boards. The family had entered the water at approximately 11am, local media reports.
Joanne says that she tried to keep the mood light during her time in the water by singing songs and joking with her kids, but that after almost eight hours had passed, she began to mentally prepare for the worst.
“As the sun went down I thought, ‘something’s gone terribly wrong here’, and my fear was that Austin didn’t make it . . . everything goes through your head,” she said.
After their rescue, the family were taken to hospital for medical checks, and are understood to have visited the rescue team to thank them almost immediately afterwards.