By Abbey Cannan
A visitor who went to the rescue of a man drowning at Noosa Main Beach in 2018 has been honoured with a bravery award.
Mr Reece Kershaw APM, Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police presented The Royal Humane Society of Australasia’s Certificate of Merit for bravery to Michael Watt, of Fadden, ACT.
At 5.55pm on November 28, Mr Watt was on Noosa Main Beach when he saw a man approximately 50m from shore floating face down in the water.
“We were on holidays and just sitting out there in front of one of the restaurants on the boardwalk,” Mr Watt said.
“I was just coming on sunset, so it was unusual for someone to be swimming out that far on such a rough day.
“I just thought it looked a bit suspicious, and I also dragged somebody in prior to that, so I knew there were rips out there.”
The beach conditions at the time were treacherous and a northerly breeze was creating large waves onto Noosa Main Beach.
The large volume of water pushing onto the beach created a well-known and regular sweeping rip.
“I just noticed that he was bobbing up and down a fair bit and without too much notice, there was no actions of waving hands or rescue or anything like that going on,” Mr Watt said.
The beach at the time was not patrolled by life-guards.
Mr Watt grabbed a boogie board and ran into the water and swam out to the man.
“It was just one of those things where it’s quite surreal,” Mr Watt said.
“You see something and you just go and rush out there.”
An off- duty life saver from Noosa SLSC also swam out to the man.
Both Mr Watt and the off-duty life saver turned the man over and put him on the boogie board to keep his head out of the water.
The life saver attempted CPR on the man whilst Mr Watt held him onto the boogie board.
Both men tried to return the man to shore but the current was too strong and the men were unable to make any headway against the rip.
Another off-duty life saver went to help on her training board.
All three then managed to get the unconscious man onto the training board.
The female off-duty life saver was then able to return the man to shore.
Sadly, the man passed away at the scene.
Mr Watt said he had mixed feelings about being honoured with the award, which he received on at a ceremony Friday 24 July in Canberra.
“It’s sort of mixed feelings because the end result wasn’t that great,” he said.
“When we left the Life Saving Club, it was pretty horrific, he was in a plastic bag and his wife was standing over him.
“It was really sad actually, we went down to the club and had a bit of a chat with the guy in charge of the police, Ben Carroll, he was the second person on the scene.
“We had a bit of a chat and we had a debrief the next day and it was all pretty sad.”
Despite the terrible incident, Mr Watt said he was a regular visitor to Noosa and planned to return in September.
“It’s one of my favourite places.”
