I wish I could say my brush with the reef inside one of Sydney’s lesser known bombies came after charging a huge swell, but embarrassingly it happened on a swim. Broken ribs, an air ambulance rescue and a night in hospital came on a day where waves barely broke on the offshore reef.
I supplement my surfing these days with a bit of ocean swimming. It keeps the cardio fitness strong and the shoulders well-oiled for my more than 50-year obsession with surfing.
The morning started like many others. Four middle-aged men setting off from a calm Sydney bay to see the sun as it kissed the horizon.
Muted pink skies framed the bombie in the distance as we rounded the point on what is normally a 2km round trip. We watched the magic moment as sunlight burst into a new day. There was a handful of surfers out. It looked small. The Surfline forecast was for 2-3ft waves at 14 seconds. We picked a line between the break and a steep cliff leading into the next sheltered bay. I figured any sets would be pretty fluffy by the time they reached us mid channel.
We swam about a kilometre past the cliff and into the bay without any trouble, but turning for home comrades Vey and Randal P. decided to swim out wide around the bombie for the return leg.
To my shame I sneered. My friend and colleague Mike Edwards agreed to swim with me back the way we’d come, picking a line about 80 to 100m out from the cliff face.
Midway into the channel I could see a wall of foam coming toward us so I dived deep but not deep enough. The wave was surprisingly powerful, rag-dolling me and rolling me shoreward. Without being tethered to a surfboard I was weightless and way more vulnerable.
A second wave pushed me further in at speed, delivering me to a patch of reef just out from the gnarly rock-lined cliff-face. I still have a few memory gaps a month later, but I remember the reef draining dry beneath me before diving up into a powerful oncoming wave. I was thrown backwards, hitting the reef, a rock or something really hard on my left side. I knew instantly that I’d been seriously hurt. The reef sucked dry again and I instinctively crawled across it cutting my hands, feet and shins and then scaling the shoreline rocks to avoid the next wave.
Mike suffered cuts and abrasions too but was safely on the rocks above me. We climbed up another 20 or 30 metres, hoping to find a way out, but the cliff was impassable. We tracked back and rested on a small rock platform.
“I can’t go any further mate,” I said.
“I think I have broken ribs.”
Luckily, Mike was wearing an Apple watch and was able to call 000 for help. It took about 20 minutes for the cavalry to start arriving. This included police from general duties, the rescue squad and water patrol as well as council lifeguards, the Westpac rescue helicopter and a St John’s air ambulance.
The sick feeling building in my stomach had little to do with my two broken ribs but more for the shame I was feeling and the guilt at such a large, expensive rescue operation being mounted.
Once the air ambulance paramedic joined us on the platform my memory is fuzzy. He gave me a green pain killing whistle to suck on while he examined me. He then cut the arm off my spring suit, skillfully inserted a canula and administered an intravenous pain killer.
He gave me a second dose, warning that the pressure on my ribs while being winched to the chopper would be uncomfortable. I was flying high well before I was airborne, but uncomfortable was a major understatement. The pain was intense. I wailed for the entire 20 second ascent until I was safely on the chopper heading to a waiting ambulance.
All up it was probably around three hours from when Mike called 000 until I was safely in the St Vincent’s hospital trauma ward being treated. What an amazing country we live in.
The key take outs from my misadventure are all about gratitude. I’m thankful for the dedicated and highly skilled first responders and rescuers, the amazing doctors, nurses and hospital staff who cared for me; and for my family and the many kind wishes I’ve had from friends around Australia and the world during my recovery.
My hard learned lesson is that decades of surfing probably made me overconfident as an ocean swimmer. The waves that day were marginal at the bombie, but there was a secondary swell at 17 seconds so I should have been more wary of large, unexpected set waves.
Five weeks later I’m back surfing tentatively. I missed a solid month of really good waves in Sydney. It left me reflecting on choices. I’d chosen to retire almost a year earlier to chase waves as hard as I could while I still could. My bad choice on that fateful dawn swim luckily was only a temporary setback. It could have been much worse and there’s still time to find some form for a month in Sumatra later this year.
I’ll keep swimming because it’s helping to keep me surfing, but I’ll be ever mindful that the sea is unpredictable and perilous. It’s the source of our greatest joy but can easily bring danger and serious consequences.
