Yeppoon’s Lorne Benussi tells story of rescuing stranded couple

A Queensland fisherman was getting ready for bed when he heard cries for help. When he shone his torch into the dark, he was shocked to find two people treading water.

A couple were found clinging to paddleboards after floating 51nm for three days off the Capricorn Coast.

A Queensland fisherman has recounted the miraculous story of rescuing a stranded couple who got caught in a rip and floated 50 nautical miles over three days in shark-infested waters off the Capricorn Coast.

Yeppoon’s Lorne Benussi had just finished up his first day of a fishing trip and was getting ready for bed just after 10pm on Monday (January 9) when he and his dad Denis heard cries for help.

Their 10-metre Roberts waverunner was anchored at Yellow Patch at Cape Capricorn near North Curtis Island.

There were a few other boats around and he said he initially thought it was some kids from the boat nearby.

Where Lorne Benussi was anchored at 5pm on Monday night before they found the couple treading water.

But when he shone a torch out into the dark, he spotted two people floating in the water.

“They were only treading water,” Mr Benussi said.

In pouring rain with 20 knot winds, the fishermen rushed to get in their tinnie and headed out a few metres to help the pair.

“They were absolutely buggered, no one can tread (water) for that long,” Mr Benussi said.

“We had to skull drag them into the tinnie.

“They couldn’t move.”

Mr Benussi said the couple was really close to going under and if they had loaded their tinnie on the roof of the boat like they usually did at the end of the day and had to get it down, he didn’t think they would have made it to the couple in time.

“Even a fit person can only tread water for an hour or so,” he said.

ISLAND FUN: Curtis Ferry regularly visits the Capricorn Bunker Group of islands

The male and female, both aged in their 40s and believed to be from Brisbane, had been dropped off to North West Island on the Curtis Ferry Services for a camping trip on Saturday, January 7.

North West Island is located 75km northeast of Gladstone in the Capricornia Cays National Park in the southern Great Barrier Reef.

The island is fully off-grid with no power and only three toilet blocks.

The couple went paddleboarding from the island and got caught in a rip, with the current dragging them away from the island and towards the mouth of the Fitzroy River.

When Mr Benussi spotted them, the couple was treading water as they had lost their paddleboards in the waves over sandbars not long beforehand.

The man was in a wetsuit while the female was in a bikini top and shorts.

“They were coming through the bar and they fell off and couldn’t hold on,” he said.

“They were just about to go under before we found them, they were very lucky.”

The couple were found at Yellow Patch near Cape Capricorn on North Curtis Island.

The couple had floated towards the island and were only a few hundred metres from shore, Mr Benussi said, but in the dark they wouldn’t have been able to tell that.

If the couple had made it to shore as well, they still weren’t near civilisation and had no supplies.

The father and son helped the exhausted couple aboard the tinnie and took them back to their boat where they gave them a hot shower, clean clothes, food, water and cordial to get their sugar levels up.

“They didn’t have much to eat,” Mr Benussi said.

“They were just in shock, we had to drag them into bed.”

The fishermen didn’t get much out of the couple as they were “so buggered they could barely talk”.

“They were just in and out of sleep,” Mr Benussi said.

The rescued couple asleep in Lorne Benussi's yacht.

Due to the low tides and sandbars, the Benussis couldn’t take the boat out again until the next morning so they left the couple to sleep overnight and took them to the Rosslyn Bay Marina on Tuesday morning where they were met by emergency services.

Paramedics came aboard the boat to wake the rescued pair up and take them out on stretchers.

The couple was taken to Capricorn Coast Hospital suffering shock and exhaustion.

On Thursday morning, a Central Queensland Hospital and Health spokeswoman confirmed the pair remained in hospital, both in a stable condition.

The couple were not scheduled to return on the Port Curtis Ferry until Tuesday afternoon and as such had not been reported missing.

Authorities were not made aware of their traumatic ordeal until they were found.

North West Island gets around 1,200 visitors per year.

A keen and experienced fisherman, Mr Benussi said the couple was very, very lucky with the weather.

There had been some storms and rain which would have helped their dehydrated states.

“They had a bit of north easterlies and tides that helped pull them into the mouth of the Fitzroy (River) … If they had drifted the other way there is no one that would have found them,” he said.

The stranded couple told the fishermen lots of boats went past them but no one spotted them.

“On a little paddleboard like that, no radar would pick them up,” he said.

“It would have been very easy to miss them.”

Mr Benussi said the area the couple was found was not known for crocodiles, but there were a lot of big sharks.

“In the state they were in they wouldn’t have lasted long,” he said.

Originally published as Yeppoon’s Lorne Benussi tells story of rescuing stranded couple