Today in Australians Aren't Real – 13-Year Old Kid Swims 2.5 Miles Through Ocean Waters, Then Ran Over a Mile to Save His Family Stranded at Sea
The Guardian – Austin and his family were on holiday in Quindalup, 200km (124 miles) south of Perth, when strong winds pushed their inflatable paddleboards and kayak offshore from Geographe Bay on Friday afternoon.
His mother, Joanne Appelbee, told him to swim ashore to seek help, telling the ABC: “I knew he was the strongest and he could do it.”
Initially setting off in a kayak, Austin had to abandon the vessel after it took on too much water in the rough conditions. About two hours into his four-hour swim, he ditched the lifejacket he was wearing.
“I was very puffed out but I couldn’t feel how tired I was,” he said.
“I just keep swimming, I do breaststroke, I do freestyle, I do survival backstroke.”
Once he had swum the 4km (2.49 miles) to shore in fading light, the teenager ran 2km (1.24 miles) to his family’s accommodation, using his mother’s phone to call emergency services at around 6pm.
If this were an American family, I would be inclined to say, "Bad! Bad Mom! What an irresponsible decision to kayak out into the unpredictable ocean waters with your young children. That's very unsafe."
But this isn't a normal family. This family is Australian. Australians don't live by the same rules as the rest of the world. For example, in the United States, kids are told to keep a safe distance from any water that might contain gators. In Australia, kids wrestle crocodiles for fun on their way to school. It's part of the curriculum in elementary gym class.
Even Australia's fucked up burn-out kids are better than everyone else's.
And in the United States, kids are taught to stay out of the deep end unless there's a lifeguard on duty. Whereas in Australia, on a child's first birthday, his parents takes him out on a boat, dump him overboard, and make him find his way to shore. No lifejacket or anything. Australian's can naturally float. So when a mother takes her kids aged 13, 12, and 8 out kayaking in the Indian Ocean, and wind up 2.49 miles off-shore, the eldest son is fully prepared to swim a Ironman's distance back to land, run an additional 1.24 miles to the nearest phone, and hail emergency services to rescue them with a helicopter.
Must have been a slow news day down under. As I understand it, this happens once a week over there. By the time Austin Appelbee is back in school (what an Australian ass name), his heroic feat will probably be overshadowed by a classmate who saved a homeless shelter that was being held hostage by venomous super-tarantulas.
Jokes aside, for a kid of that size to pull off that rescue, experts say he "exceeded the limits of what is normally perceived as possible". Austin Appelbee achieved what they call "hysterical strength".
Prof David Bishop, a muscle exercise physiologist at Victoria University, said fight-or-flight situations can enable athletes – and ordinary people – “to go beyond what their perceived limits are”.
The phenomenon has sometimes been referred to as “hysterical strength”, though the origins of the term is unclear.
In a 1961 study, researchers found that people were immediately stronger at a forearm flexion task when frightened, after shooting a starting pistol next to participants’ ears without warning.
Anthony Blazevich, a professor of biomechanics at Edith Cowan University, said the release of fight-or-flight hormones had an impact.
“If you get highly motivated, if you have some fear, you’re going to be releasing adrenaline, noradrenaline, other stress hormones like cortisol, which dump a whole bunch of sugar into your blood,” he said.
If only there was a way for the human brain to unlock hysterical strength on command. My high school hockey coach always used to preach about "playing with desperation". But no matter how much he pleaded with us to play desperate, you can't just manufacture that feeling. You can't fake desperation. Not without drugs. The human brain doesn't work that way.
Although I can't help but wonder if a hypnotist could make a difference. Say a football coach brought one into the locker room before games to hypnotize his players into believing that if they don't win, their family will be skinned alive by a Mexican drug cartel. Sorry, I just started Ozarks last night. I have Mexican drug cartels on the brain. But you get my point. Hiring a hypnotist to your staff might be a smart move.
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Come to think of it… people have been grasping at straws to come up with any plausible explanation for how on earth Curt Cignetti won a National Championship with a bunch of 3-star recruits at Indiana.
If years from now we come to learn that Curt Cignetti secretly learned the art of hypnosis… that his secret sauce was hypnotizing his players into achieving max potential… it probably wouldn't be the most shocking development in college sports of the last 10 years.