Nine year old Australian surfer survives tsunami in Java

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Nine year old Australian surfer survives tsunami in Java

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 24 July, 2006 : - - When the tsunami hit, nine-year-old Australian Dylan Ansori was surfing with his mates. The six-metre waves came without warning and in a rapid succession - like a "stampede of buffalos", by the terrifying account of his mother, Mary.

In seconds, Dylan was thrashed by the waves onto the beach on Java's south coast, but incredibly managed to hang on to metal railings on the beachfront. Once the water subsided, he climbed a cliff behind the beach, with dozens of other survivors.

For the next three hours, his mother did not know whether Dylan was dead or alive. She and her eight-month-old baby were forced to higher ground near the sleepy fishing village of Batu Keras, about 30 kilometres west of the surfing and fishing resort town of Pangandaran, also devastated by the tsunami.

"Luckily, he had some older boys with him looking out for him," Ms Gilleece said. Many were not so lucky. By last night, the official death toll was 337 from the tsunami, triggered when a magnitude 7.7 earthquake rocked the sea floor late on Sunday.

No official warning was issued - a tragic omission, in spite of earnest promises that an international warning system would be put in place quickly after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated nearby Sumatra and parts of the Indian Ocean, killing 230,000 people, including 170,000 in Indonesia. Indonesian officials explained that a country-wide early warning system would not be in place until 2009.

Grahame Malligan, a former Sydneysider, picked through the rubble of his Bay Surf shop in Batu Keras yesterday. "We all felt the quake, but the first we knew of the tsunami was a roar. When we looked up we saw fishing boats sort of jumping in the air out in the bay."

He had been with his friends, Andrew Warmbrunn, from Melbourne, and Lyal Mackintosh, a board supplier formerly of Darwin. Mr Malligan said the three grabbed their wives and children and "headed for the hills".

Mr Warmbrunn said: "There were about six waves. The second was the biggest and the locals said it was as high as the point, I guess about four or five metres."

Mary Gilleece was also at Batu Keras. "I was just sitting on the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day. I decided to go back to my house with baby, and then a few minutes later everyone was running, shouting, 'Big storm, big storm!' At first I thought it was a stampede of buffaloes," she said.

Ms Gilleece said she jumped in her car with her baby and tried to head back to the Lego Pari beach, where Dylan was surfing with friends. "But I couldn't get back to Lego Pari because it was flooded, and the road was blocked by debris," she said.

Instead, she was forced to drive to higher ground. Three hours later someone gave him a lift on a motorbike to the main town of Cijulang, where he was reunited with his mother.

Ms Gilleece, who has worked for 12 years as an English teacher in Bandung, West Java, spent Monday night staying in a villager's house above the beach. "Everyone was really panicking, saying this will be like Aceh."

It was not until yesterday morning that she could see her husband, Sofyan, who had almost drowned in the tsunami waves at Pangandaran. "I was sitting in the Bamboo cafe and then all of a sudden, we were swamped by water, and I almost drowned," he said. "I was hit by rocks."

He managed to climb onto the roof of the cafe, but from there could see children being swept away by the waves.

Wayne Proctor, a 46-year-old maths teacher at the Australian International School in Jakarta, said he and his wife were walking along a footpath in Pangandaran when they heard "this roar like a waterfall".

"Had we been inside the hotel, I'm sure we would have been dead because the waters that swept into our room were at least six feet [two metres] high."

Lyall Mackintosh, 60, said some French and an Australian surfers had been preparing to enter the water when the tsunami appeared on the horizon. "They all got the shock of their lives," he said.