Two men have died and a woman is in hospital after a boat capsized off a beach in South Australia’s east on Monday.
Police reported that three people had been found unresponsive near Point Connor, south of Beachport, after reports that a boat had capsized.
Two men, aged 82 and 69, could not be revived and died at the scene. The woman, 59, was taken to hospital. All three were from the nearby town of Millicent.
Police said there were no suspicious circumstances: “Investigations into the circumstances surrounding the incident are ongoing with the assistance of the Water Operations Unit.”
Police will prepare a report for the coroner.
Also on Monday, emergency services crews were searching the waters off Adelaide’s Henley beach after reports of a person going missing.
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The alarm was raised at 1.20pm after witnesses lost sight of a person in the water.
Police asked people to avoid the area during the search.
According to Royal Life Saving Australia’s national summer drowning toll, 41 people have drowned since 1 December. That figure is one above the five-year average to this date.
In New South Wales, the search for a man missing after a fishing boat was found off the Illawarra coast has been scaled back.
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Emergency services were called to Windang Island near Warilla, on Friday evening after a 4m Quintrex aluminium boat – registered to an experienced skipper, Tony Andeliero – was found empty.
The 61-year-old was believed to have been alone on the boat. Despite extensive searches over four days, he has not been found. The scaled-back search will continue.
On the final weekend of 2024 – 28 and 29 December – there was a spate of drownings in waterways across the country.
Three adults were pulled from a rip at Conspicuous Cliff beach, on Western Australia’s south-west coast on the Saturday. A man was able to be revived but a husband and wife, Dr Mohammad Shahidul Hasan Swapan and Sabrina Ahmed – who had entered the water to rescue their daughter – died at the scene.
In Canberra the next day a 21-year-old man failed to resurface while swimming with family and friends at Pine Island in the Murrumbidgee River. His body was recovered almost two hours later.
On the same day in Tasmania, a 38-year-old man drowned after encountering difficulty with strong currents while trying to rescue four children at Carlton beach, east of Hobart.
A a 55-year-old man died after falling from a waterfall near Cairns in far north Queensland. Emergency services arrived at Behana Gorge about 1.30pm and found the man’s body an hour later.
And on the Gold Coast an 18-year-old man died falling 15m into a rock embankment after reportedly using a rope swing at the Coomera River.
He sustained critical head, chest and pelvic injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.
On Christmas Eve a teenager, Luca Bennett, was swept off rocks by a wave at North Avoca beach on the NSW Central Coast. The 15-year-old’s body was found three days later.
– with AAP
Source: theguardian.com
