THE grief-stricken family of drowned Central Coast teenager Jack McCabe tearfully told how his quest to dive "as deep as he could go" cost him his life in Bali.
On a family holiday, they left their hotel for a day trip snorkelling in a remote bay off the island of Nusa Penida.
"We were having such a beautiful time," said Jack's mother. "We had all been snorkelling around for an hour together. He knew his stuff, had done marine studies and was always in the water with his friends at home.
"He knew the safety procedures and we discussed them when we were all out together. Jack kept showing us how deep he could go. He just wanted one last swim.
"We were all watching him and then took our eyes off him for a couple of minutes and the next we knew some local divers who were in the bay brought him up.
"He just went too deep, there was no sign he had hit his head or anything," she explained, dismissing reports that he was knocked out after hitting his head against a boat.
"They couldn't get him on the boat so I jumped in," explained Jack's father John McCabe. "His mum started CPR and I was doing compression but there was no one to help us, no one spoke English and our 12-year-old, daughter who had seen it all happen, was screaming."
After about 30 minutes of trying to revive their son with CPR with no assistance from the local boat operators, they took him to the beach and continued to try everything to bring him back.
"I kept telling my husband, he's gone,'' said Mrs McCabe. "We couldn't communicate with anyone, there was no one to help us. When we took him to the local clinic it was filthy and there were no facilities,'' she said.
Now, the family are planning to return home with their beloved son's body.
"We are not leaving without him, we don't know when his body will be released and we are not leaving without him, we just want to go home,'' said Mrs McCabe from her hotel in Legian Bali.
Trapped on the island for four hours before transport could be arranged to take them back to Bali, they finally arrived at Bali's Sanglah hospital seven hours after the accident.
Jack was a popular boy and keen on his sports.
"He really knew what he was doing. He was always watching those shows on television and would come down at night with his laptop and show me things he had found on the internet about diving and underwater studies. He knew and we knew what to do and how to snorkel safely, how to equalize, we think he just dove down too deep and couldn't get his air.''
"The family's nightmare continues as they battle with their UK based insurance company who told them it was Friday afternoon in the UK when they called and they would not be able to provide immediate assistance.
"The Australian consulate is trying to help but we still don't know when we will be able to take him home and we are not leaving," explained his grieving father.
The couple spoke of the pain their twelve-year-old daughter suffered watching the whole thing unfold, losing her brother in a remote island bay. Their older daughter waits at home, distraught.
"We just want to be together and we can't get him home.''
The medical examiner at Sanglah made a statement that the boy's injuries were consistent with drowning.
The family says he never surfaced and waved, he had no injuries apart from the scratch on his nose. They spent seven long hours with him before finally reaching the hospital in Bali far too late to change the outcome and save their beloved son.
Local divers claim he may have been a victim of shallow water blackout, a syndrome that often affects experienced divers when they free dive and take in too much air before going down.
"Technically it is like hyperventilating, when the body has too much carbon dioxide and the brain doesn't register. It can cause a black out and results in drowning,'' said Dewi Kartika, a local dive expert yesterday.
The family agree this is probably what happened. They have not requested an autopsy, they simply want to go home with their boy and grieve together with their family.
"We can't leave the room, we can't stop crying, our daughter is not okay, she saw it all.''
Jack McCabe lies waiting in the local morgue while consular officials attempt to sort out the red tape so that the family can finally return from the Bali holiday that started so well and ended in tragedy.
No comments:
Post a Comment