It wasn’t the first or last’ tragedy on rocks

Confronting scenes as three men swept to their deaths in dark at Hill 60.

Marine Rescue Port Kembla volunteer Ray Miller spent many career years in the navy but one overnight radio shift at the unit’s Hill 60 base in January hit the experienced veteran - and other members of the emergency services - hard.

Three men, aged 45, 49 and 69, died on January 22 when they were washed off rocks while fishing in front of the unit’s radio base. A huge wave swept five men into the ocean but two managed to clamber back to shore with minor injuries.

Ray, who has just notched up five years with the unit, took the first call for help about 10pm.

The Radio Operator’s experience that night is an insight into the confronting and challenging circumstances that can face our volunteers and other emergency services members when they report for duty to serve the community.

While Ray said he was okay in the aftermath of the multiple drownings, he conceded “you don’t want many of those” nights on shift “but it wasn’t the first and it wasn’t the last”.

“When I came into work, it was still daylight and you could see people were virtually shoulder to shoulder down there. It’s not unusual to see 25 people there at night,” he said. “We got the first call from a guy on the rocks. He was calm and composed. I got his name, phone number and he said ‘look, two people have been washed off the rocks, they’re face down, not moving’. And then he said ‘oh hell, another one has gone in, we need a chopper here now’.”

Ray immediately alerted the NSW Police Force Marine Area Command, which activated mass rescue resources, including helicopters and its Wollongong vessel with divers on board. Before long, emergency services were assembling at a command post in the carpark at the base, with coordinators operating from the radio tower’s deck, which has a direct line of sight over the popular but hazardous fishing spot.

Unit Commander Kevin Bradley joined Ray in the radio room and they watched the response unfold.

“We could see where someone was floating in the water. You could see them in the moonlight. There was a lot of white water and you could make out the dark shapes,” Ray said.

Air ambulances winched two men from the water and the third was recovered by Marine Area Command.

“We finished up with two bodies in the carpark under blankets,” Ray said. “There was a young woman from the ambulance and she was very upset. It upsets the professionals.

“The thing that really gets to people like me and that ambulance officer is that these guys in their 40s, they’ve probably got teenagers at home and now they’ve got no guidance from their fathers for the rest of their lives. What are those kids going to do?”

Surf Life Saving NSW Chief Executive Steven Pearce said it had been a confronting scene for first responders.

“[This is] just an absolutely horrible way to start the long weekend,” he told media the next morning, as Surf Life Saving and MR Port Kembla and Shellharbour crews launched a search operation to confirm no one else was missing.

NSW Ambulance Inspector Norman Rees said it had been “very chaotic ... it was a very distressing scene”.

That same afternoon, more fishermen were washed off the same rocks, with one requiring oxygen. Just three weeks later, another two men died when three were knocked into the ocean. A Police Highway Patrol Officer leapt into the water to go to their rescue.

Ray recalled an earlier incident in which another man had been washed off the rock shelf.

“They didn’t find his body. It was really sad. The next day, a lady was sitting on the rocks staring out at the water. I was on duty and it looked really suspicious,” he said.

“I took her down a bottle of water and asked if she was okay. She thanked me and said her husband had gone into the water and she was ‘waiting for him to come back to me’. For more than a week she just sat on the rocks, watching.”

The January 22 fatalities held a particular sting for the unit.

In August last year, a young man had handed in a mobile phone he had found nearby to Radio Operators Michelle Davidson and Doug Cooper.

Michelle found a contact number

MR Port Kembla Unit Commander Kevin Bradley and radio operators Ray Miller and Doug Cooper on the Hill 60 radio base deck overlooking the rocks where five fisherman died this summer.

in the phone and called it, hoping to find the owner. It turned out to be the owner’s daughter, who lived in Kempsey and had lost contact with her dad. Michelle handed the phone to police, who were able to return it to James Jung.

A couple of weeks later, James dropped in to the base to thank the volunteers for finding his phone. Soon after, he and his daughter reestablished contact.

In a cruel twist of fate, the dad who had so recently been reunited with his family was one of the three men who lost their lives on the rocks. He had been wearing a lifejacket.

“It was bitter-sweet,” Michelle said. “We had connected them but then all of a sudden it was his time. At least he didn’t go without reconnecting. He wasn’t alone.”