Drowning Swimmer’s Shocking Confession Sparks Urgent Reminder to Aussies | Yahoo Australia

A terrified beachgoer who witnessed a “near drowning” at an Aussie beach shared the swimmer’s shocking confession as he gasped for air on the shore.

The beachgoer was walking along an unpatrolled section of beach in NSW when she spotted “someone out in the surf with their hand up” who was “getting smashed by the waves”.

She realised the man was in trouble, and without any kind of flotation device and with the closest lifeguards likely “two kilometres down the beach”, all she could do was call 000. Thankfully, the man managed to navigate out of the waves and find his way onto a sandbank and stand up.

While he was “down on all fours trying to get a breath”, he confessed to the woman who helped him to shore that he had second-guessed whether he should ask for help while struggling in the water.

She said, “[He was] very shaken up and he said to me, ‘It takes a lot for me to ask for help. I don’t want to be a burden to people. I really wasn’t sure if I was going to put my hand up or not’.”

She added, “I said to him, ‘You know, the discomfort of asking for help is much less of a burden to somebody that’s going to help you than coming across a dead body on the beach’.”

Rips remain one of the greatest and most common hazards on Aussie beaches, claiming 21 lives in the country every year on average. Coastal scientist Rob Brander told Yahoo News Australia that rescued swimmers often admit they didn’t want to ask for help. He said, “I work with lifeguards all the time, and we talk about these sorts of things, just how people do not call for help. And the reason for that could be a whole bunch of things. It could be embarrassment, could be shame.”

He added, “It’s not uncommon for people not to call for help, [but] you absolutely, absolutely should because a drowning situation escalates so quickly.”

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