[Agence France-Presse]<\/p>\n
MANILA, Philippines\u2014Three lucky backpackers were plucked from shark and crocodile infested waters off the coast of Darwin, Australia by rescuers who stumbled on the stricken trio after their boat sank, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The tourists, who have not been identified, were three kilometers off the coast of the northern Australian city of Darwin on Tuesday when their small boat capsized in choppy seas during a fishing trip.<\/p>\n
But the backpackers were saved by chance when a customs boat searching for a missing vessel happened to spot their heads bobbing in the water just 30 minutes after the accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came across their heads in the water completely by accident,\u201d said Ian Badham from the aerial rescue service Careflight.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s very unlikely they would have been found any other way, so those three people, they\u2019ve just won lotto,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Darwin harbourmaster Captain Bruce Wilson said two men and a woman, including a French citizen and a Filipino, had been hauled out of the water after customs officers spotted them at sea.<\/p>\n
The trio did not have a radio or flares, and nobody would have known that they were in the water, which he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cIt really was lucky because the Corio Bay (customs vessel) was doing a search, it was daylight, and they were near a shipping channel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson said that although the water wasn\u2019t cold, the trio were still in danger from the deadly creatures that frequent Darwin\u2019s harbour. \u201cWhether you freeze or get chomped by a croc, I don\u2019t know which one you\u2019d prefer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Agence France-Presse] MANILA, Philippines\u2014Three lucky backpackers were plucked from shark and crocodile infested waters off the coast of Darwin, Australia by rescuers who stumbled on the stricken trio after their boat sank, officials said Wednesday. The tourists, who have not been identified, were three kilometers off the coast of the northern Australian city of Darwin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}