By Josefine Ganko
A bushwalker who was washed into the ocean after taking a wrong turn on a popular coastal walk says he felt like “an idiot” for being “too stubborn to turn back”.
Daniel Hart, 27, was lucky to walk away with only minor injuries after spending the night sheltering on a rock ledge 20 metres below Eagle Rock, along the popular Coast Track in Royal National Park, 50 kilometres south of Sydney.
Daniel Hart says he felt like an “idiot” when he had to be rescued after taking a wrong turn on a popular coastal walk.Credit: Nine News
In a dramatic rescue almost 22 hours after he was thrown into the ocean, Hart was winched to safety by a helicopter about 2pm on Sunday afternoon.
Hart told Nine News he spent “about three hours climbing along the rocks” before a “massive wave came and changed everything”.
After falling into the water about 4pm on Saturday, Hart was “ragdolled” by waves, before eventually being washed onto the rocks below Eagle Rock.
Named for its resemblance to the head of an eagle, the lookout stands about 40 metres above sea level in a remote part of the Coast Track, about four kilometres from the nearest road.
Hart spent the final hour of daylight on Saturday scrambling to get back up to dry land, settling for a small cave halfway up the cliff face where he spent the night “curled up in a ball”.
Asked by Nine News what was going through his mind, Hart said he was thinking: “You’re an idiot, why are you so stubborn?”
When the sun came up on Sunday morning, Hart spent a few hours trying to climb the 20 metres to the top of Eagle Rock.
But about 10.30am on Sunday when it became clear it wasn’t possible, Hart said he had to “swallow [his] pride and yell out for help”.
Passers-by on the cliff face above heard his calls and alerted emergency services.
NSW Ambulance activated its rescue helicopter, which was used to winch Hart to safety about 2pm, in what Inspector Jason Rutherford said was a “difficult extraction”.
“He was unable to be winched directly up the cliff, so they set up a lateral safety system to move him sideways to a place where he could be safely winched by the helicopter,” Rutherford told Nine News.
Eagle Rock is a popular lookout spot along the Coast Track in the Royal National Park.
Paramedics treated Hart for minor scratches to his knees and mild hypothermia. He was then taken to hospital for cautionary testing.
Hart, an experienced bushwalker, was hiking the Coast Track as a part of a 4500-kilometre journey to raise awareness for a Universal Basic Income. He was 50 days into a planned 4500-kilometre journey from Victoria’s east coast to Cape York in far north Queensland.
Of his rescuers, Hart said he “can’t thank them enough”.
“It could have been a lot worse.”
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