A group of mates who desperately tried to save the people inside the seaplane that crashed into the Hawkesbury River have spoken out about their ordeal.
Richard Cousins, 58, his fiancée Emma Bowden, 48, his sons William, 25 and Ed, 23, and her daughter Heather, 11, along with pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, all died when their seaplane slammed nose-first into Jerusalem Bay on New Year’s Eve.
A group of mates nearby, aboard a houseboat they’d rented, jumped in a dinghy and rushed to help.
Todd Sellars, 32, was one of the people on the scene, and told the Daily Telegraph how he and friends Lachlan Hewitt and Kurt Bratby dived down trying to open the doors of the aircraft. A nurse, Tash Sharwood, was also on the tinnie, in case the passengers needed first aid.
“It took us less than 60 seconds to get there,” said Sellars. “The plane was upside down and the pontoons were filling with water.”
The three of them dived down to try and open the doors, while friend Will McGovern stayed at the controls of the houseboat.
“I couldn’t get the doors open because I kept running out of air,” continued Sellars, adding that none of the passengers appeared to be banging on the windows for help.
“I’m not sure if I saw a lady or it was the lights playing tricks on me. It was awful because we knew people were in there and we couldn’t get them out.”
McGovern told the ABC that the water around the plane was becoming thick with aviation fuel.
“The whole time I was freaking out that this fuel was going to spark,” he said. “This plane was moving fast, it was going down fast – they could have got sucked in.”
Other boats arrived at the scene, and began screaming at the men to get out of the water because of the fuel.
The men then tied the tail of the plane to their dingy, trying unsuccessfully to pull the aircraft to shore. In the end, they tied the rope to a buoy to make it easier for the police to find the plane.
McGovern said he would nominate his friends for a bravery award for their efforts. “It was an extraordinary level of bravery that my three mates showed getting in the water,” he said.
He added that he could only think of the families in mourning at the moment.
“The families of these poor people, they need to know people were there risking their lives trying to help their family members,” he said. “There was someone there trying to do something.”
