When he discovered the swimmer, who happened to live in the same street, was being dragged out by the current at the Koonya back beach, he swam out to try to calm him and get him to float on his back.

Exhaustion forced the mechanical engineer to return to shore. The victim was brought back to the beach and resuscitated, but later died in hospital. “I went in and tried to rescue him but wasn’t very successful,” Mr Kladaric, now 23, said. “It was pretty hard at the time, yeah.