By Brendan Rees
When Robert Manning went freediving the last thing he expected was to find his friend unconscious 12 metres underwater.
The 67-year-old Cranbourne man and his friend, Nathan Watson, 30, also an experienced free diver, had been scouting for fish off Leonards Island near Eden in New South Wales on 5 June 2014.
“The plan was to meet at the boat in an hour’s time,” Mr Manning said.
“His float hadn’t been moving for quite some time and I got curious and starting moving over to his direction,” recalled Mr Manning.
He followed the line down and saw Mr Watson lying on his back, motionless 12 metres from the surface on the sea floor.
“Before I did anything I had to go up and breathe,” he said. Mr Manning then swam back down to his friend where he “ripped his weight belt off and got him to the surface.”
He removed Mr Watson’s face mask, finding him unresponsive. “He was staring into the sun, he was gone. We’d lost him I thought.
“I rinsed his mouth and face and blew three or four breathes into him. His chest and everything was rising.”
Despite being about 300 metres from their boat, Mr Manning immediately began CPR and swam the man towards the boat.
“Everything was in slow motion. I was cool, calm, collected even though in the back of mind I thought I’d lost him.”
Once on the boat, he called triple-zero before returning to administering CPR for 45 minutes.
“I wasn’t going to give up ever,” said Mr Manning. “I would’ve kept doing it for days until someone took over.
“I had to push the panic and fear aside and try and bring him back to life,” he said.
Finally Mr Watson regained consciousness and began to breathe on his own.
Mr Manning, a cancer survivor, credits his first aid training which he had completed only days earlier prior to the incident. “I just did what I was trained to do,” he said.
Mr Watson was airlifted to Canberra and placed in a coma.
“They treated him for secondary drowning and ammonia. He made a full recovery and was back at work in about three weeks,” said Mr Manning.
For his actions, Mr Manning was commended for brave conduct in the Australian Bravery Decorations on Monday 20 August.
“These awards have helped to define, encourage and reinforce our national aspirations and ideals by identifying role models,” Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove said.
