It was meant to be a night of fun and celebration at Rosebud Beach for Sally Liu and her three other friends.
The group spent more than seven hours clinging onto the two paddleboards before “miraculously” finding land on a small island on the opposite side of the bay.
“I was just thinking, how can we survive?” Liu said.
Liu said they just wanted to have “some fun on the beach” while celebrating the completion of their VCE studies.
“When the sun was going down and it was getting darker and we couldn’t see the beach. We (were thinking) this isn’t good,” she said.
“We were in the middle of the ocean. We couldn’t see anything.
“I was thinking, do I have to stay one night on the paddleboard and how can we survive?”
Together with Rong Shi, Shirui Zheng and Lee Li, the group bound the boards together on one end to make sure they stayed together.
Liu said they spent the night supporting each other to make sure no one fell asleep.
“Each one of us at night were feeling sleepy but we knew we (couldn’t) sleep or close our eyes,” she said.
“We were yelling and then we tried to hit our friends and to get them awake. The four of us hugged each other.”
From his hospital bed, Li told the ABC that they could see helicopters trying to search for them while floating in the water.
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“We just saw some helicopters trying to search for us and that gave us some hope to stay alive,” he said.
“It was very horrible. We were trying to figure out some ways to save our life.”
But soon they were pushed in the direction of Swan Island, near Queenscliff about 2am.
“We put our foot down under the water to see if we could stand (when we saw the island),” Liu said.
“We tried to stand and touch the ground and we could. It was really exciting because we knew if we found land, we would survive.”
The group found a shelter under a hunt before they were spotted on the island by security.
For Rong Shi’s father Jack, it was an incredible relief to hear the news of the teens safety.
“We are still digesting what happened, it’s a Christmas miracle, so we are just so grateful for this,” he said outside Geelong Hospital on Tuesday.
“They were very cold and exhausted and hungry. But these these kids are very, brave so they are all in this together.”
The group feel “very, very lucky to be alive”, according to Liu.
“The thing is like, I must enjoy my life. It’s really not easy to yeah, it’s like my second life, I think I’m really lucky,” she said.
“It’s like everyone give us the opportunity to have the second life so you’re not going to waste any time.”
