# Take me back to the sweet times
# The hot nights
# Everything is gonna be alright
# In the summertime
# Baby, in the summertime
# That is where I'll be. #
Veteran lifeguard Harries has always been a favourite at Bondi.
# Oh-Oh! #
Action hero... Danger. I feel it on my skin...
..aspiring poet...
..but at no stage was I threatened by the creature within.
Back when he was a relative rookie,
Harries dug his heels into the sands of Bondi.
Been on the beach 10 years,
I'm gonna be on the beach for another 30 years.
Now coming up to his 30th year...
I'm the permanent fixture,
like a lighthouse here, son. (LAUGHS)
..the grinning guru wants to pass down his wisdom
to his young followers.
Lesson number one - if you're gonna scan the beach,
don't do it like you're reading, go from left to right,
go against the grain
and it'll keep you alert at all times.
The key to observation is elevation.
The veteran life guard, 29 years in the game.
It's about teaching the skills back to these young recruits.
10 years now!
If you're a 10-year-old, you're in Year 5,
so I'm going to school these kids!
I'm just doing advance to head down.
It's swift between the red and yellow flags.
School's in for Faddy this afternoon.
He's patrolling the north flags while Harries is down south.
Faddy grew up with me down at Bronte Beach.
He's an exceptional surfer. He won the junior Australian titles.
I remember him doing a rescue...
The patient's slipping off the board...
He was covered in suncream.
Could not for the life of him get him on my board.
So slippery.
I knew the boys were watching on the beach and I panicked,
passed him on. He's given in!
He gave him to the IRB.
Oh, Faddy!
Everyone gets a nickname here.
And I named him Slippery straightaway.
You can't just slip someone off the board and pass them on.
You have to bring him back into shore.
Four years later, Faddy has a chance to redeem himself.
I just noticed some splashing in the rip.
Three people that were starting to sink.
They weren't in a good way.
South buggy, Harries, mate.
Can you just go up to the middle set of flags?
There's three just drifting out.
I better go.
I get a call to back Faddy up.
And it wasn't just one rescue, he had three guys.
I've never had to rescue three people at once.
My first priority was just to get them there,
hanging onto the board, floating.
(SHOUTING FROM WATER)
I did hope Harries would come out.
Mate!
Where's the other one?
Because it all happens so quickly...
..you don't really have time to get anxious or scared about it.
You're kind of like, "Oh, well, this is the situation.
"I've got to get on with it."
He's got him. He's got all three.
Well, one was on the board and two were holding onto his ankles
on the side of the board.
I'm thinking, "Wow, this is amazing!
"He's created his own rescue technique here."
Got them in, mate.
Harries seemed to think I had it under control,
so he let me wrangle them in.
Wow! He's got all three of them,
and he brings them back to shore safely.
I'm so proud.
He's getting the job done exceptionally well.
And there's nothing better than having a great waterman
part of your service.
That time when you, you know,
you were slipping off the board... Yeah.
Mate, you've gotten that good at the rescues,
you had four of them. Four!
Nah! It was three! Three!
I'm one. Four, including me.
That's what I'm saying... I couldn't swim.
..four of you out in the water.
So, yeah, you're not Slippery anymore,
you're Grippy now! (LAUGHS)
The new pups, they might have a bit to learn,
but they also teach me a lot, too.
Faddy has earned himself a new nickname!
Love you, Grippy!
I think Harries thinks that first incident
has made me determined to never let that happen again.
And it's true.
But I'm not going to let him know that!
Keeping thousands of swimmers safe day after day
puts strain on even the most experienced lifeguard.
And one of Bondi's best has set himself an even tougher test.
The challenge is running, walking, crawling for 48 hours straight.
Over two days and nights, Will plans to run more than 150km
back and forth along the coast.
He's gonna start at 4:00PM this afternoon near Bondi,
and he's gonna finish here at Bondi, 4:00PM on Friday.
I'm going to work, go home and sleep,
come back to work for another full 12 hours,
go home and sleep, come back,
and he'll be still bloody going! (LAUGHTER)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Will's marathon is raising money for a charity called Bottle It,
which promotes exercise for mental health.
It's something close to Will's heart.
I've struggled with mental health,
losing the one thing that I was passionate about
and wanted to, sort of, make a career, which was rugby.
I lost it to a serious head injury.
I've been to dark places after not being able to play anymore.
With Bottle It, all you have to do is just run, swim, cycle,
do something that is going to benefit
not only your physical health, but your mental health.
It's a solo run, but Will is not alone.
His fellow lifeguards will take turns to run alongside him.
Oh, look, down here, it's like a brotherhood,
you know, all us guys in blue, and we support each other
whatever they're doing, any adventure they're doing
and charity raising, we all get behind it.
I'll have a run. I'll do a couple of legs tomorrow and Friday.
We're just going to try and take his head
out of the pain-cave a little bit.
I've signed myself up to the graveyard shift!
Well, where would you want to be at 3:00AM in the morning?
In bed!
(LAUGHTER)
So, does he take a bit of bog roll with him?
Run with that? So many questions.
There's a part of me wanting him to not finish,
just so I've got something over him for the rest of his life!
And then also, there's a part of me going "100%, he's gonna nail this!"
While Will's quest has just begun,
most of the lifeguards are heading home for the day...
..until an urgent call just south of the tower.
(WOMAN MOANS IN PAIN)
EDDY: It was a surfboard fin chop to the inside of her thigh.
The people who pulled her out said the femoral artery had been hit.
The femoral artery is a major blood vessel in the leg.
Ambulance, please.
If severed, a person can bleed to death in minutes.
It would appear, at the moment, it's her femoral artery.
I believe she's just lost consciousness.
(WOMAN MOANS IN PAIN)
Right on pack-up time at Bondi,
a surfer has suffered a fin chop from her own board.
First responders and lifeguards suspect
she's severed her femoral artery.
The femoral artery is the biggest artery in the body,
and it runs down the thigh of the leg.
If you cut it, you can lose all of your blood
in a very short time.
If it's not treated the right way, you've only got minutes to live.
Within 30 seconds, Joel and Jacko brought the trauma kit...
..used mainly for shark attacks,
and I've never seen that kit had to get used.
All the big bandages and dressings, tourniquet,
things like that, to deal with major wounds.
The first responders have got a towel
and they just wrapped it really tightly around her leg,
and it was just blood coming through the towel.
One of the first responders is a doctor who was surfing nearby.
She's been applying pressure to the wound
to staunch the bleeding.
It wasn't until we undressed the towel,
then we could see how bad the cut was.
It was the worst I've ever seen, for sure.
Massive, deep wound.
I need more...
It was as deep as, yeah, I've ever seen anything go.
(WOMAN MOANS IN PAIN)
We then had a deeper look into the cut,
and at this point, I knew straightaway
that the femoral artery had not been cut open or damaged,
so that was a big moment of relief.
And we all looked at each other and we said,
"OK, you know, we're going to get this girl off the beach."
22-year-old Karolina is on holidays from the Czech Republic.
Right now, she's struggling to comprehend her brush with death.
We've got her in the buggy, we're on our way home.
At this stage, we knew she was in good hands,
'cause the paramedics came there so quickly.
It was the best response from the paramedics I've ever seen.
The ambulance is there within minutes.
Just... The first responders applied that towel
and they just had it so tight.
Like, they had all their body weight on her leg,
with the towel wrapped up.
MAN: Makes me scared about... Does, eh?
I can't believe that doesn't happen more often though, like...
She was millimetres away from dying,
which is something that...
It gets thrown around a lot, close to dying, all this stuff,
but, like, she really was that... Like, THAT close to dying.
If it wasn't for Doctor Kate's quick response,
things could have turned out very differently.
While the exhausted lifeguards can finally pack up,
Will is only a few hours into his marathon run.
I'm feeling really good.
We're 2 hours 45 minutes in,
so you can ask me that again in another 30 hours!
For the next two days,
he will run up and down the coast near Bondi,
raising funds for a mental health charity.
I've struggled with mental health,
just trying to find my way from injury.
Rather than me sitting at home,
I could focus my energy on training
and sort of becoming a better person just through movement.
That's why Bottle It is so important to me.
Whoo!
Will's fellow lifeguards are right beside him...
..Mitch and Coops joining him for the night shift.
There'll be certain checkpoints where I have to have a break.
If I need medical attention or anything like that,
I'll be stopping,
but, other than that, I've just got to keep grinding
and keep moving away.
We've got La Perouse...
..that'll take us into the night-time.
Nightfall, Will is slowing down.
Bed's overrated!
Close to walk, where it's at.
First lap done.
Back at the start line. Pretty much 55km in, I think.
By morning, Will is 14 hours into his run...
..but the lifeguard shift has only just started.
Eddy is on patrol today, keeping an eye on the rip down south.
Holy shit! OK, I gotta go, I gotta go!
See you, bruh.
As soon as I start driving down to the Backpackers' Rip,
I saw two people, hands go up and just splashing.
And as soon as you see the white wash,
you know instantly someone's in trouble.
That's indicating that they're panicking
and they're potentially drowning.
(RADIO BLEEPS) South Buggy to central.
I'm in here for two heads in the south corner.
And the panic that I've seen in them,
when you see the look,
you see all the splashing around them
and you know they're fighting for their lives.
I've just seen hands, like, going up and I'm hitting waves,
and then I've just sort of lost sight of them.
I don't want to lose contact with those hands.
Eddy has raced in to save a couple panicking
in the notorious Backpackers' Rip.
It's hard to tell people to not panic.
However, it's absolutely the worst thing you can do.
You just use so much energy.
It only takes 10 or 15 seconds
to use all your oxygen to stay afloat.
Each wave I went over, I lost sight of them,
so I just never knew if they were going under or not.
They were definitely exhausted.
Come back. They were so surprised.
I don't think they knew that any help was on the way,
and they were just very relieved.
I want you to lie down. Lie down onto the side.
The husband, who was really doing his best
to keep his partner afloat...
Because I think that she couldn't swim very well
or at all, and he knew that.
So, yeah, it was a huge relief.
Come back and lie down.
I need all of you to lie down.
They were just in shock. Lie down, lie down.
They just don't process simple instructions,
because they've just been so exhausted.
When we got to the beach, a lot of emotion came out.
It's alright, that's OK.
For them, it was life-threatening,
and I know that they were incredibly appreciative.
On holidays from Colombia,
husband and wife Barack and Angie had no idea
how dangerous Bondi can be.
Oh! I'm exhausted after that one!
So many rips, they look usually so calm.
That attracts the people who can't swim.
So, definitely, yeah, definitely a close call.
Luckily, they can go home happy today.
We're glad to see on your feet!
Three days after her life-threatening fin-chop injury,
Karolina is up and about.
Surgery, it took like, two hours, Stitches in many levels.
A part of me still just doesn't believe
that it didn't hit the femoral artery.
It was such a big fin cut
and it just went so deep into her leg.
I actually get a flight today to Prague.
So, thank you. I don't want to see you ever again!
Yeah, yeah! OK, let's shake on that.
Alright, yeah, we don't want to see you either!
(BOTH LAUGH)
For her to come back and say thank you,
it's a great feeling.
Will has reached the halfway point of his 48-hour coastal run,
but it's looking more like the end of the road.
It was that halfway point where I thought,
"Oh, shit, I've got to start again!"
And he does.
With 24 hours still ahead of him, Will soldiers on.
Really seizing up now.
Just got to keep moving.
Guts are starting to play up with the amount of sugar and shit
that I've got in me.
Um...
I was starting to fade, and I was with Jethro.
He told me I was sort of swaying from side to side, and...
..I was starting to get a little bit delirious.
I was hallucinating, seeing penguins on the road.
I just had to stop and just cool off
because the heat was pretty crazy.
WOMAN: Is this his tube?
The biggest worry at that point is dehydration or sunstroke,
but I was drinking so much water.
I've just got to keep trudging on.
Will pushes through to the second night...
Big man's putting me in.
..with a little help from his friends,
including Maxy, Glick, and Harrison.
Come on, Bigsy! Bring it home, brother!
Go, Willie!
The second night, it's still hot, it's humid,
but the support that I've had, it's been unbelievable.
Yeah, just walking at the moment.
It was a massive boost for me.
It was really special, actually.
They just kept pushing me.
By day two... Morning!
..Will has a band of brothers by his side.
He's known for his high pain threshold,
but Will's legs are cramping
and he's struggling to continue.
HARRISON: He is in the home straight.
The body's seizing up.
I don't know how he's done it.
That last morning was horrendous for me.
Yeah, I was up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Lifeguard Will is 38 hours and 140km
into his two-day run for mental health charity, Bottle It.
But the finish line feels a long way off.
The way he's holding himself, he's in pain.
He's hurting and you can tell he's defeated.
So, that last morning was pretty horrendous for me.
The lifeguards rally around him.
The boys, they just kept pushing me.
And I had too much support around me to give up.
Body power!
Being a lifeguard, it's everything.
And it's everything to all of us up there,
because in the summer months, we spend more time with each other
than we do our families.
We know each other inside and out.
We're always there for each other, inside of work and outside.
The camaraderie and mateship in that tower,
and in this team, it's second to none.
Yeah, it's bloody special.
(WHISTLES)
I kind of found this second wind in me.
And, yeah, mate, I'm feeling good,
I'm moving good.
Feel a million bucks, really.
We've seen him go back and forward
past here for the last 48 hours.
He's only got about 10 minutes to go,
so great effort. I can't believe he's done it.
The finish line, I didn't expect anyone to be there.
Like, I wanted a family and a few mates to be there.
And then I'm just running by myself at North Bondi,
and I look up and just behind the tower,
there's just people everywhere.
And I was like... Everyone was in white shirts.
And so I was like,
"There must be some sort of white party on
"or something like that." (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
As I'm getting closer, these claps start happening
and I was like... Well, I just get these chills.
I'm going, "Nah, surely I don't know any of these people!" (LAUGHS)
What are they doing here?
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Yeah!
Yeah, running through the finish line,
I see my wife right at the tail-end,
and, yeah, it was something I'll never forget.
Having all the boys from work there,
we've all been through a lot together.
The support, the cheers
was something that's really, really special.
I got 175 in two days, so I think that's alright
for a bloke who's my size
and not much of a long distance runner.
The cherry on top was to raise the money for Bottle It,
so that foundation can do bigger and better things
in the future for people who are struggling.
I won't tell him this, but far out, I'm so proud of him!
(BOTH LAUGH)