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A teenage boy is being hailed a hero after swimming for hours through rough waters off Western Australia to get help for his family who had been swept out to sea. The family was holidaying at Quindalup 250 kilometres south of Perth. His mother, brother and sister had clung to a kayak almost 14 kilometres offshore. 13-year-old Austin Applebee swam for four hours to successfully raise the alarm.

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00:00My boat kept on flipping and then I lost the oar.
00:08And then I started paddling in the kayak like this, and I look back at mum and I just wait
00:19there for mum, and then mum says, Bo, give Austin your oar, Austin, go get help.
00:28And I thought, I knew it would be a long way, because it was like four kilometres, but the
00:37kayak kept on taking in water, I was fighting rough seas, and then the kayak dumped me a
00:50million times, and then I was holding on to the kayak for so long, because I thought
00:58I saw something in the water and I was really scared, and I was just thinking, I was just
01:02thinking in my head, like thinking I was going to make it through, but I was also thinking
01:06about all my friends at school and friends of my Christian youth.
01:15And yeah, I just said, alright, not today, not today, not today, I have to keep on going.
01:22And so I get, there's like straps on the kayak for if you want to put stuff in the boat.
01:32I tied that to my life jacket so I could keep from putting the kayak, but that didn't help,
01:37just bring me out further.
01:40And so I untied the actual strap from the boat, and then I just started swimming with just
01:53my life jacket, and then after a while I found out that didn't work so took off my life jacket,
01:59I had to untied the rope to my foot, and still that didn't work so I had to untie the life jacket,
02:08and I had to just swim to shore.
02:11How challenging was that swim?
02:18I was very puffed out, but I couldn't feel how tired I was.
02:24I don't know, I was more thinking of a lot of things that, you know, what's happened
02:31in my life.
02:32I think at one point I was thinking of Thomas the Tank Engine.
02:36You know, trying to get the happiest things in my head, trying to make it through.
02:43Like not the bad things that would distract me and bring me out further.
02:47And at this time, you know, the waves are massive and I have no life jacket on.
02:54So anyway, I just keep swimming.
02:59I do breaststroke, I do freestyle, I do survival backstroke.
03:04You know, and then it took me about four, so I had the life jacket and the kayak for two hours,
03:14and then for the next two hours I was just swimming with no life jacket.
03:19I don't know, but at one point when I was doing breaststroke, I was looking, I can actually see underwater,
03:29which I couldn't do before.
03:31I just keep swimming, just keep swimming.
03:36And then finally I just made it to shore and I hit the bottom of the, you know, the beach,
03:51and I just collapsed.
03:53And then after that I had to sprint two kilometres to go get to the phone.
04:01And then when I got to the phone, there was a lot of foreign people on the beach,
04:07so I couldn't really get much help.
04:10And so I ran to the phone and I called triple zero and I had a call with triple zero.
04:18Police, I said I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats.
04:25My family's out of sea.
04:31I was very calm about it.
04:34I think it was just a lot of shock.
04:36It just went through my mind and I just took it nice and easy.
04:42You just got some discussions to them and it was really difficult.
04:43You've got gotta get people down.
04:45You got a lot of sense?
04:46I didn't just think of what I was just going through with glasses.
04:47Okay.
04:48It's a lot of sleep sometimes.
04:49Okay.
04:50Do you mind if I could do this?
04:51Do you mind if it's looking for me?
04:53No, no, no, no.
04:55Do you understand?
04:56That can't be something that I have to go into.
04:58And what's like a one thing?
04:59I have to be very few барajая.
05:01That's for us to go with the viewer control team.
05:03And if you got into shining, you think it was just sayingilia overshire.
05:06The majority of things that were better if I mean to be a�� milieu.
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