Another Rescue

While the story of the rescue of the two men trapped underground in a Tasmanian gold mine for 15 days unfolded, relatively little attention was paid to the fate of three men lost in a small boat off the coast at the other end of the country.

The three had set off to collect some members of the local rugby league team for a game, which gives you the first cultural pointer - we’re talking about seventy kilometres in an open boat as opposed to getting picked up in the team mini-bus. They got into trouble and drifted out of range of their mobile phones and waited until they were back in range to send a text asking for help. It took 22 days before they were able to send the message and survived by eating raw squid, drinking rain water and fashioning some sun shades from bits of metal.

There are immediately obvious reasons why the story attracted very little attention. The area is remote and no one knew where the men were. But in Australian terms, there are other reasons.

Large numbers of Australians take to the water in boats every weekend and it’s not unheard of for some of them to disappear and it’s far easier to disappear in the Pacific Ocean than it is in say, the Bristol Channel. Add to that the occasional disappearance of rock fishermen, usually swept into the ocean by waves, and such events are far from unusual.

It’s easy to get lost on land, as well. Even in relatively populous New South Wales, you don’t need to go far to find mile upon mile of bush, mostly unmarked by tracks. Australia is a vast and mostly empty land and Australians believe in making the most of it. They’re also realistic about their prospects if things go wrong, don’t expect to be rescued as a matter of course, and prove to be pretty resourceful, as did the trio in the boat.

Perhaps it’s something of that attitude that sustained the two miners, in their very different circumstances.