Gastroenterologist on a paddleboard rescues teens from ocean rip

Dr Chris Hair says medicine has helped his 'boardside manner' during a crisis.
Dr Chris Hair.

A doctor has helped save a group of teenagers from an ocean rip, paddling out in unpatrolled, rough seas to rescue them.

Gastroenterologist Dr Chris Hair was at Torquay Surf Beach last Tuesday on a day off, thinking about taking his paddleboard out, when he spotted several teenagers on surfboards caught in a rip current.

It was around 3pm and conditions were “pretty terrible”, with strong winds and a south-westerly swell, he said.

He realised that the teenagers were beginning to panic.

Some had abandoned their surfboards to swim to shore, but the rest were drifting farther out.

“They were a long way out. I thought they were from a local surf academy, but they kept drifting away from shore,” Dr Hair told 6minutes.

As he took a work call, the doctor at Epworth Geelong realised that nobody else was there to make the rescue.

The beach was not patrolled by surf lifesavers in October and the local kiosk manager was not around.

“I cut my work call short, quickly grabbed my board off the roof of my car and pulled on my wetsuit.”

He paddled out to where three teenagers had drifted and towed them back to shore with help from three other beachgoers.

Dr Hair — who is married to a GP — said he spent most Tuesdays surfing and paddleboarding at the beach, while taking some work calls.

His knowledge of Torquay Surf Beach and his experience in the water gave him confidence to make the rescue.

“If I had got stuck myself, I knew that I would have been okay,” he said.

“Being in the ocean has been part of my life since I was a teenager.

“I knew the area, so I knew where that rip was running to, and I knew, as long as those people were not panicking, it would be easy to get them out of it and back to shore.”

He said being a doctor helped him manage situations with a cool head.

“You are often in a crisis situation in hospitals, so I am used to much worse than going somewhere I am familiar with and having a bit of a paddle.”

“Every day, we operate on patients in theatre, and occasionally things go wrong but we manage to save their lives.”