Matt's feet are dry

ABCD Mathew Nolan reading Navy News alongside the HMAS Hawkesbury after returning from the Solomon Islands.

Photo: LSPH Damian

ABCD Mathew Nolan, 25, had dry feet when Navy News photographer LSPH Damian Pawlenko took this image after Mathew and his ship HMAS Hawkesbury
(LCDR Paul Mandziy) returned safely from the Solomon Islands earlier this month.

It was a different story in August. Hawkesbury had left Ghizo Harbour after taking a seriously ill child to hospital when her lookouts spotted six Solomon Island men treading water after their boat had sunk. The six were spread over a wide area. A shark was menacing one.

Another swimmer was in some difficulty so Mathew took a flotation device and jumped into the ocean to support him. "He was very worried that he would lose the bundle of clothes he was hanging on to," Mathew related upon his return home. "I suppose I was in the water with him for about three minutes," the Tamworth sailor said.

Mathew and his shipmates recovered the man and his five friends to Hawkesbury and took them ashore. The image of Mathew and the islander he rescued appeared on the front page of Navy News on August 28.

We decided to give him a copy of the paper when he returned.

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