THE woman at the centre of a dramatic rescue at Nobbys breakwall has described her moment of terror when a wall of water turned a happy snap into a battle for survival.
Standing near the northern end of the Nobbys breakwall on Friday, a woman was swept onto rocks and nearly into the sea after a monster wave pummeled into the rock shelf and spewed thousands of litres of seawater over the wall.
The woman, who didn’t want to be named, described looking off the breakwall as a ‘‘freak wave’’ smashed over the end and slammed her onto rocks. Photographs show spray rocketing more than 15 metres high as the wave enveloped the wall.
‘‘There was nothing I could do about it, all of a sudden I was off my feet and trying to cling to things,’’ she told the Herald. ‘‘It took my feet from under me and all I could do was wait until I hit the rocks and try to grab something.’’
Despite receiving more than a dozen stitches to her leg and arm and a cut on her ankle that ran ‘‘almost to the bone’’, the woman said she had ‘‘gotten lucky’’.
‘‘If I had of fallen any further I would have been in real trouble,’’ she said. ‘‘It was all pretty quick – the adrenaline was pumping until we got [to the hospital] and I thought, ‘oh s - - -, this hurts’.’’
Her partner was standing nearby at the time, and rushed onto the ‘‘jagged’’ rocks to rescue her.
‘‘The one she fell onto was massive, it was probably the worst rock,’’ he said. ‘‘I didn’t see her, I just saw the wave hit the breakwall, turned around and she wasn’t there anymore. I heard her call out and thought, ‘I’d better go get her’.’’
Cessnock councillor Cordelia Troy was taking photographs of the massive swell when she noticed a young couple and another tourist at the end of the breakwall just before noon.
The first image shows the young woman taking a photograph of a tourist as her own partner took snaps of his own. But then the mountainous wave hits, completely covering the pair as the other tourist calmly walks to safety.
‘‘It was the biggest wave you have ever seen and it just smashes them,’’ Cr Troy said.
‘‘She is gone but the next moment you see him grabbing her off the rocks and carrying her away.’’
A cyclist offered his bike seat to help carry the bleeding woman back to safety as Cr Troy called an ambulance.
‘‘She was in shock, she was shaking,’’ Cr Troy said.
‘‘She said: ‘‘What was I thinking? I just wasn’t thinking about the power of the ocean.
‘‘And she said she was just so lucky she didn’t hit her head when she was dragged off the breakwall.’’
Huge swells are expected to continue battering the coast over the weekend, with some surfers taking the opportunity to ride a a few decent barrels inside Newcastle Harbour.
But one surfer needed to be winched to safety after being swept onto a rock shelf at Dudley.
Lifeguards later warned a bodyboarder in a helmet about trying to ride waves at a break north-east of Nobbys lighthouse called Big Ben. The bodyboarder was washed by the huge swells into Stockton Bight, with lifeguards rescuing him on a jet-ski.
Earlier in the day, a jet-ski was towing surfers into overhead waves off Merewether Beach.
Waves exceeded three metres in conditions that come around only a few times a year. Beaches will remain shut on Saturday.
