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Indonesian navy washes up on Australia's East Coast
EIGHTEEN sailors from a beached Indonesian Navy training vessel have been found beside the road near Rainbow Beach north of the Sunshine Coast after their vessel was driven aground. The vessel is understood to have been in Australian waters on route to APEC in Sydney.The sailors, wearing life jackets and speaking little English, sparked concerns they were illegal immigrants from a fishing boat but the men were later discovered to have been from the tall ship Arung Samudera, which beached in bad weather on Inskip Point. Inskip Point is just north of Rainbow Beach, about 210km north of Brisbane. The crew walked into Rainbow Beach police station at 3am today. ABC radio said the men were found this morning on Rainbow Beach near Gympie by local man Bob Elmer. Mr Elmer said he found the men on a road behind the beach wet and shivering but looking relaxed. The men told him they were Indonesian and were travelling on a boat from Cairns to Brisbane when their boat broke down. "There were about a dozen people standing on the road and from what I could understand - and I'm not real good at listening to Indonesians talk - they said they were coming from Cairns to Brisbane and broke down and washed up on the beach," Mr Elmer said. "We've just been trying to organise the police and the SES to help." The southern area of the Queensland is being lashed by huge seas and high winds whipped up from a low moving slowly north. Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman said it was understood the 12 men were Indonesian naval officers on the 40m sail training vessel Arung Samudera. "We believe they were travelling to Brisbane," she said. Posted by: Oztralian 2007-08-23 |
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