Three children were on Tuesday hailed for their strength and courage after surviving for six days in a treacherous, shark-infested sea following the capsize of their family’s boat in heavy weather.
The two sisters, 10 and 15, and their 11-year-old brother swam more than 8km from the upturned hull of the boat to a rock in the Torres Strait, near Papua New Guinea, where they squatted without food or water for three days.
They then swam more than 1km to a deserted island, where they lived on oysters, dry native plums and milk from coconuts peeled open with their teeth, until they were rescued. Their parents and a three-year-old brother who had stayed with the boat are still missing.
The children had been travelling to a birthday party on Thursday Island with their parents, Naseli and Lisa Nona, when disaster struck last Tuesday. Just more than 40 minutes into the two-hour voyage from their home on Badu Island, the engine of their fibreglass dinghy stalled, causing the boat to capsize in rough seas .
The parents pleaded with daughters, Ellis (15) and Norita (10), and their son Stephen to save themselves.
”The whole group of people remained in the water for about three hours,” said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s spokesperson, Ben Mitchell.
”Then the two girls and boy were urged to swim to the nearest island, which they reached after a three-hour swim. We believe they’ve swum about 9km from where they foundered before they reached this rock, which is really the last outcrop before you head out to a vast expanse of water.”
The current had swept the children from the middle of the channel separating Badu and Thursday islands towards the edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Arafura Sea.
Nona’s sister-in-law, Wendy Phineasa, said the children last glimpsed their parents as they paddled towards the outcrop. No rain has fallen in the Torres Strait in the past week, as temperatures reached the mid-thirties.
Vickie Tamwoy, a nurse who is the sister-in-law of Nona, said Stephen had insisted they swim for Matu after three days on the barren rock.
”He said to the girls, ‘If we don’t swim for that island we’re going to die.’ They swam there with the tide and there they found dried coconuts, and they ate wongai fruit, also known as the Torres Strait plum.”
They stopped off at other outcrops in the swim to Matu, and were found on the island by their uncle after a search was launched on Monday.
”They saw their uncle in a dinghy coming towards them and they started waving and shouting with all their might and heart,” said Phineasa. ”They were all shivering and weak, and they ran to him and hugged him and started crying. They all started telling him what had happened and [said] ‘You’ve got to go look for mum and dad’.”
The children were dehydrated and sunburned, and Ellis had suffered coral cuts to her feet, but otherwise all three were unharmed.
The alarm was only raised on Monday after it was discovered that the family had never made it to Thursday Island. The Torres Strait, separating Queensland’s Cape York from Papua New Guinea, is a fast-flowing coral-choked stretch of water 128km wide. Despite increasing fears that the three missing people are dead, locals remain hopeful they will be discovered alive.
”The community’s just hoping that they’re probably on an island or the mainland [of Papua New Guinea],” said Naseli’s sister, who did not wish to give her name.
In 2001 two Samoan fishermen were rescued in Papua New Guinea after drifting for four months, surviving only on fish and rainwater. In 1992 two fishermen from Kiribati in the Pacific survived an even longer ordeal of six months. — Guardian Unlimited Â