Anneka Bading was swimming in the reservoir of a popular waterfall, she had no idea that a tragedy had happened right behind her.
Bading, 24, used a GoPro camera to film herself and her friends at Mackenzie Falls in the Grampians National Park, but she inadvertently captured the last moments of a person's life.
A man, believed to be a 28-year-old Taiwanese citizen, jumped into the water and drowned, and his friends tried to save him.
Bading was swimming with two friends near the waterfall around 5 pm. That day, she heard people shouting and pointing to a place where the water was very deep.
"At that moment we had no idea what was happening. We thought that some animal was in the water. We could not understand what was happening, and they continued to shout and point," she said.
"One girl grabbed the stick from the GoPro camera and tried to use it to save the man. Then, before I could blink, someone drowned," she said.
Bading said that she tried to call rescuers, but no one in the area had a phone signal. "No one knew what to do, and we could not understand the victim's friends.
My legs were shaking when I realized what was happening, but no one knew what to do," she told the newspaper's reporters. She said that the rescuer, who was at the waterfall, jumped into the water, but realized that the reservoir was too deep, and the pressure was too strong, so he did not risk diving deep under the water. "We all told him not to take any chances. Thank God he didn't do that, said the girl. She had to drive 10 minutes to the place where the network worked, and she was able to talk to the emergency services. They told her that under the waterfall there is a stone ledge in which a person could get stuck.
The body of the person was found around 9:30 a.m., the newspaper reported. Bading now wanted to call on the authorities to install a warning sign and improve the quality of the telephone signal. "We were swimming where this man drowned," she said.
"It could have been us. We were all very excited on the way back and said that we were lucky to be alive."
"In all of the state's national parks and reserves, it is important that visitors read warning signs and follow the advice of park rangers," added the park's Chief Operating Officer.