A remark made by a teenage boy who swam kilometres through rough waves to save his family has been met with “disturbing” comments shifting the focus away from his brave act.
Joanne Appelbee and her three children were holidaying near Quindalup, WA, where they hired a kayak and two inflatable paddleboards for what they thought would be a calm afternoon swim on Friday.
However, conditions deteriorated while they were in the water and the family was pushed further out to sea, where at least one paddleboard flipped and two oars were lost.
With the situation worsening, Joanne urged her eldest son, 13-year-old Austin Appelbee, to try to reach shore to raise the alarm.
It took the Year 9 student about four hours to swim roughly four kilometres back to land. After reaching the beach, he ran a further two kilometres to the family’s accommodation to find a phone and call emergency services.
“There was a lot of foreign people on the beach, so I couldn’t really get much help,” he said when speaking to media.
The remark was later shared on social media, prompting a wave of responses, including some that targeted overseas visitors.
“Even if they could understand, would they have cared?” one user wrote.
“And we all know why these foreigners were not help because they aren’t expected or obliged to learn English,” another added.
Other comments were more extreme.
“Deport them all. If they can’t even assist a child, they don’t belong here. Deport with prejudice,” one comment read.
“You are in real trouble if you don’t fight this hostile invasion,” another responder said.
Others pushed back, noting the south-west coast of Western Australia is a popular destination for international tourists, particularly during summer, and said the focus should remain on the boy’s actions.
“It’s quite disturbing to me that after viewing this video with this wonderful heroic story, the replies are full of folks who are laser-focused on the ‘foreigners on the beach’ rather than focusing on this kid’s amazing spirit & faith. We’re f***ing cooked,” one commenter wrote.
“Geez. It’s summertime in Australia on the beach. I would love to be a ‘foreigner’ there right now. How about focus on the young hero,” another added.
Austin later recalled that two “nice ladies on the beach” offered him food after he called triple-0, but said he “passed out” from exhaustion.
Rescue authorities, police and government officials have praised the teenager’s efforts, which unfolded in waters where sharks had been detected late last month.
While her 12-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter remained at sea, Joanne said sending Austin for help was an agonising decision.
“One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make was to say to Austin, ‘try and get to shore to get some help’, because it was getting serious really quickly,” she said.
Austin initially attempted to paddle back on his kayak, but after about two hours it began taking on water due to large waves. He abandoned both the kayak and his lifejacket, which he said were slowing him down.
He alternated between survival backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle, and said he kept his spirits up by thinking about his girlfriend, his friends and Thomas the Tank Engine.
After reaching shore near Toby’s Inlet, his legs collapsed from exhaustion. He then ran back to the hotel and used his mother’s phone to call triple-0 at about 6pm.
“I said, ‘I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats, my family’s out at sea’,” he told 7News.
Emergency services launched a multi-agency search involving WA Water Police, local marine rescue volunteers and WA’s Rescue Helicopter.
Austin said he stayed calm but feared the worst.
“In that meantime when I didn’t know where they were and how they were and I thought they were dead, I had a lot of guilt on my heart cause, you know, I thought, ‘oh man, I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t fast enough’,” he said.
Joanne and her two younger children, who were wearing lifejackets, had been in the water for around eight to ten hours.
“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,” she said.
“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.”
She was later separated from her two children after a wave knocked them off their paddleboard, but they were located about five minutes later by a rescue vessel.
All three were taken to Busselton Health Campus, where Austin had earlier been transported after collapsing from exhaustion. He later said he initially believed news of their rescue was “fake”.
Police described Austin’s actions as “superhuman”, while WA Premier Roger Cook called him a “true hero”.
“Austin’s bravery is beyond his years, showing remarkable courage, resilience and determination in the face of real danger,” he said.
“Well done, Austin – we’re so proud of what you’ve done.”
Image: 7News/ ABC
