When she heard the screams for help coming from the ocean, Bella Broadley looked around for something she could use and found an esky lid.
Armed with the makeshift flotation device, Bella and her friend Elyse Partridge raced into dangerous surf to save two 11-year-old girls who were struggling.
"We were just having a little picnic at the beach with some girlfriends and this woman came up to us and was like, 'I can't swim and my girls are drowning,' and we just jumped into action," she said.
The girls were at Angels Beach near Ballina, an unpatrolled beach along a stretch of coastline popular with surfers.
On January 30, 2021, the younger girls, Chloe and Violet, became trapped in a rip, overwhelmed by waves and the current.
To make things worse, it was around 8pm and getting dark.
"It was so rough, it was crazy," Bella, now aged 19, said.
"[I was] just swimming out and thinking, 'Oh my gosh, how am I going to get back in? This is bad'.
"But luckily I had the esky lid for part of the way to keep my head above the water and once I got to Violet I just swam for my life."
An exhausting fight
Bella handed the esky lid off to Chloe and swam further out to help Violet.
Elyse was close behind, and helped Chloe back to shore.
"I remember just grabbing my arms around her and trying to swim in, but we ended up hitting the rocks," 20-year-old Elyse said.
"I ended up being quite bruised and had lots of cuts all over my hands from the rocks but obviously I'm fine and it would have been scarier in the water."
Later, Chloe and Violet described how they swallowed seawater and were increasingly exhausted by their fight to keep their heads above water.
Violet needed to spend the night in hospital.
Bystanders and police who attended the scene told Elyse and Bella that without their help, the younger girls would likely not have survived.
"I was quite happy that we ended up doing it because I kept just thinking about what could've happened if we hadn't gone in," Elyse said.
"I see those girls out and about in the town and I just get a bit emotional sometimes," Bella said.
"If we weren't there, these beautiful girls wouldn't be alive."
Bravery award
Elyse and Bella were on Wednesday named on the Governor General's Australian Bravery Decorations Honours List, which recognised 66 Australians for acts of bravery.
They were nominated by Erin Danks, Violet's mum, who was at home when she received the call about the rescue.
"Immediately after we had gotten out of hospital and I knew Violet was good, my thoughts turned to Bella and Elyse," she said.
"I didn't know them at the time and I just thought … I need to meet them, and I need to know if they're okay."
Ms Danks said she, Violet and Chloe each put together statements about what happened so Bella and Elyse could be considered for a bravery award.
"They were really brave, really selfless, they got out there and risked their own lives," Ms Danks said.
"I'm not sure if they knew at the time how bad the rip was … we're just lucky as a community that we did not lose four lives."
Beach safety key
Over the 2022-23 summer, there were 54 coastal drowning deaths around Australia, 28 of which were in NSW.
Nine per cent of the fatalities were people trying to save someone else from drowning.
Elyse has some surf lifesaving training experience and Bella is a former club swimmer, but the stress of the rescue has stayed with them.
They both called for people to be more safety-conscious at the beach, and learn how to spot and avoid rips.
"I've got two younger brothers and whenever I'm at the beach, I'm like, 'Can you please just stay in and don't go too far?'" Bella said.
"And obviously they want to go out and be in the deep, but it's just so scary to me now."
