Power of faith: WA 13-year-old’s four-hour swim saved mum, brother and sister out at sea

MEDIA and rescue personnel are calling it “heroic” and “supernatural” but the 13-year-old West Australian boy Austin Applebee who swam for four hours through rough waters in fading light to save his mother and two siblings now believes it was faith in God.

Austin and his family had been paddle boarding and kayaking at Geographe Bay near Quindalup on the exposed Margaret River region on the southern coast of WA on Friday when strong winds pushed their inflatables out to sea, police said.

The teenager attempted to paddle back to shore to raise the alarm but the choppy conditions kept filling his kayak with water, forcing him to abandon it and swim the remaining 4km (2 nautical miles) to shore as light faded.

Austin and his younger brother Beau, 12, were in kayaks and his mother Joanne and sister Grace, 8, were on a paddleboard. Austin and Beau had tried to pull the paddleboard towards shore with their kayaks but were repeatedly swamped by the waves.

Commander Paul Bresland of the Naturaliste Volunteer Marine Rescue Group said the efforts of the teenager were “superhuman”. “The bravery, strength and courage shown by this family were extraordinary, especially the young fella who swam 4km to raise the alarm,” he said.

Austin told the ABC he swam in the first two hours with a life jacket on, then ditched it, and he swam the next two hours without it. After four hours battling the chop he made it to shore sometime before 6pm WA time and collapsed from fatigue, passing out for a period. After recovering he then ran about 2 kilometres back to their accommodation, where he got his mother’s phone to call emergency services.

The boy was able to raise the alarm by 6pm local time, prompting a major search from Quindalup beach, near Dunsborough.

Joanne, Beau and Grace were located by a rescue helicopter at about 8.30pm as they clung to the paddleboard about 14km offshore. The family had been driven a further 10km offshore by the strong southerly winds from where Austin set out for shore.

Joanne said she and her son and daughter were cold and shaking, and Beau couldn’t feel his legs. She said she had to make the difficult decision earlier to ask Austin to leave them and swim to shore.

Austin told 7 News he thought of his schoolmates at his Christian youth group and wondered if he would not make it. “I was also thinking about all my friends at school and my Christian youth (group) and I just said not today, not today, not today – I had to keep on going.”

“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 told media in Perth on Tuesday.

What most media never reported was Austin’s prayers: “I kept praying and praying, I said to God ‘I’ll get baptised, I’ll get baptised’,” the Australian reported.

A faith-based website called “The Other Cheek” reported Austin’s quote in more detail: “… Just keep on swimming. Just keep on swimming. I don’t think it was actually me did. It was God. The whole time I kept on praying, I kept on praying and I said to God, I’ll get baptised, I’ll get baptised and all that. And I went to church on Sunday.”