While an RAAF Orion aircraft took off to search the Southern Ocean for shipwrecked yachtsman Tony Bullimore, British-born Edward Jeffries in Adelaide fought back emotion as he watched the news on television.
Less than a year earlier, his only son, Paul, 29, had drowned in St.Vincents Gulf, South Australia, while aircraft at a base 5 km away, and a $1.2m. multi-purpose sea rescue boat, the MV Gallantry, stood by, idle. Its crew, who could have set off two minutes after any alarm call, read about the missing fisherman in next morning’s paper.
‘I felt pleased for Tony Bullimore and his family and I was overjoyed when he was found,’ says ex-British Merchant Navy man Jeffries. ‘I admired his guts and determination. But I have no doubt that an Orion aircraft with all its high-tech search facilities and apparatus would have found my son alive.’
Paul Jeffries and a friend, Colin Daken, had set off to swim to shore from a sand-bar when their 5-m. bondwood boat sank about 5pm on March 17 after hitting a reef. Jeffries father said: ‘My son did everything right. He sent off distress calls which were received by police. The police said the calls were treated as hoax calls.
‘At 11.20 pm my son’s wife became very anxious and phoned the police. The police then decided the calls had not been hoax calls and a rescue mission was organised. By that time my son and his friend had decided to swim for the shore and had been in the water for seven hours. Sixteen hours after he had made his distress calls his body was found just off the beach.’
Lying idle in the docks nearby at the time, was the three-years-old emergency response vessel, Gallantry, with a trained fire-fighting crew of two, on standby for sea rescues or fires. It had a shallow draft enabling it to operate in deep or harbour-side waters.
So what went wrong?
The South Australian Government’s then Minister for Emergency Services, Mr.Wayne Matthew, said to Mr.Jeffries, in a letter, that rescue resources deployed by the police that night were considered adequate. This comprised two helicopters, a fixed-wing aircraft, two police launches, eight sea rescue squadron vessels, two volunteer coastguard vessels, a hovercraft and a police search team on shore.
Says Mr.Jeffries: ‘That all sounds very good. But as I understand it, none of this armada went out until after one o’clock in the morning. Had the Gallantry been sent as soon as the police decided around midnight that the calls were not hoaxes, my son might have been saved. His wife phoned the police at 11.20 pm and it wasn’t until 1.15 am that the police search began.’ Nine hours later, a helicopter crew spotted Paul Jeffries’ body.
Colin Daken said when he struggled ashore that both he and Paul had been wearing life jackets when they took off to swim from the sand bar. Jeffries, a father of three, had only life-jacket straps on when his body was found. The buoyancy sections had disappeared.
Paul Caica, Secretary of the United Fire Fighters Union, whose members operate the Gallantry, told me: ‘The crew could have taken the vessel out within two minutes. It is built specially with a shallow draft so it can operate in shallow or rough open seas. It is an outrage that it was not utilised. One must question the response procedures in place that leaves a resource like the Gallantry moored during such a search. The UFU suggests that those involved in the rescue, and in particular the family of the man who tragically lost his life, might well suggest that an inquiry ought to be held as to why a readily available and most suitable resource sat idle. Gallantry is a modern, multi-purpose, specially built vessel that must be implicit in all South Australian marine emergency rescue response plans.’
Even though it is almost a year since Paul Jeffries, a physically fit man and a strong swimmer, lost his life, there has been no inquest and police are still carrying out investigations into the circumstances of his death. ‘I talked to them again today,’ said Mr. Jeffries.
He has spent months researching the various government departments involved in emergency services; how alerts are responded to, and the technical specifications of the Gallantry’s construction, along with its capabilities. ‘Watching the news of the rescue of Tony Bullimore I wouldn’t be honest if I did not make comparisons and say that here was a man who had the whole of Australia and its facilities behind him. I know how Tony’s family must have felt at the time when he still hadn’t been found.
‘The Gallantry was built for those waters and should have gone out that night. I just keep going because I am the sort of person who, when I ask a question, I like truth for an answer.’
