Fitzroy River drowning fisherman saved: Lyn Eather shares experience

A Baralaba couple have recalled their harrowing experience saving a foreigner who fell into the Fitzroy River while fishing and failed to resurface.

Lyn Eather and Carl Hendrick have shared their experience of a near drowning of a fisherwoman on the Fitzroy River.

When Lyn Eather went for a leisurely walk with her partner Carl Hendrick along the Fitzroy River days after Christmas, she never imagined the events that would follow.

The Baralaba couple were in Rockhampton and had some time to kill before picking up a family member from the train station, so they went for a scenic drive along the river and decided to go for a walk down the jetty.

There was another couple on the jetty fishing and a lady, who was a foreigner and looked to be in her mid 30s, threw a cast net out but as she threw it, lost her balance and fell into the Fitzroy River with it.

“She just cast her net out quite a long way, she lost her footing, her feet went in first,” Lyn said.

The southside boat ramp on the Fitzroy River where it happened.

A few seconds went by and they were waiting for her to come back up but there were only bubbles on the surface and the water was all murky with a slight current.

The fisherwoman’s partner then ran a few metres and jumped in after and as he resurfaced it became obvious he couldn’t swim either.

“He didn’t really come up for a period of time,” Lyn recalled.

“Then we thought we were in trouble here.

“They came up together and they went down again.

“There was never a scream, there was just lots of murky brown water.

“The eerie thing was the flip flops… they just came up to the surface and floated away.”

The jetty where the fisherwoman fell in.

At this point, Carl knelt down to reach out to the fisherman and pulled him towards the jetty, but the fisherman panicked and pulled Carl into the water as well.

They all managed to make it to the jetty and it was all over within a few seconds.

The fisherwoman didn’t speak any English and the man hugged Carl and said a huge thank you.

Thankfully, Carl’s phone and car keys were still in his pocket but they still worked when he got out of the water - but he didn’t have a change of clothes and was quite saturated.

Carl Hendrick of Baralaba.

Thinking about it in the days after, Lyn said it could have been much worse.

“A little bit of me thinks how it would have played out in another moment,” Lyn said.

“If we hadn’t seen her go in… there was no noise.

“The potential of what could have been.

“I always think there is a lesson to be learned there.

“It just got me thinking about all the near misses and the basics.”

Lyn Eather and partner Carl Hendrick, Baralaba.

Lyn urges anyone who knows someone who can’t swim or who can’t swim themselves to make learning to swim their 2023 New Year’s resolution.

“It’s basic, if she knew that one basic… Learn to swim to the edge,” she said.

“You have these Aussie blokes to help the foreigner who didn’t have any swimming ability.

“Even after the whole thing… We didn’t really have a proper chat because the English wasn’t good enough.”

Lyn recalled her schooling in Baralaba when she learnt to swim in the Dawson River.

The day she graduated year 10 in 1986, two of her friends nearly drowned after getting caught in the flooded Dawson River.

“At the time I recall wondering for a while if they were in trouble or not,” Lyn said.

“Without the basics people are vulnerable.”