“I couldn’t see him for a moment,then all of a sudden,he was floating face down,” Ahern,a GP,recalls.
Before an ambulance arrived,he performed CPR together with two surfers who were off-duty paramedics,but the man couldn’t be saved. Ahern suspects he suffered a medical episode in the water.
Police said the man was a 66-year-old from Mitcham.The Age has confirmed his name was Barry Oakes and he was a pastor at the Ashburton Presbyterian Church.
After Oakes was pronounced dead,Ahern,who lives in Kew but is a regular at Surf Beach on Phillip Island in summer,turned to check on a local who had witnessed the tragedy. She told him a 15-year-old girl had been pulled from a rip at the same spot the day before.
Oakes’ death was part of a spate of drownings along the Bass Coast this summer that has devastated family,friends and coastal communities.
The same day Ahern pulled Oakes ashore,another man drowned off nearby Kilcunda and a diver perished off Port Welshpool further along the South Gippsland coast.