Recommend this book. It is well worth the read.
These people reflect and give hope for what being an Australian really means.
Chapter 20 or 21 if your looking for me.
Would you squeeze your way into a shoulder-width, pitch-dark stormwater drain to rescue a kid as it flooded? Would you knowingly cop a 20,000 volt electric shock to save a friend and his child? Would you swim out from the beach to rescue a man bitten by a five-metre white pointer, while the shark is still circling him? Would you run into the carnage of a burning Bali nightclub to save people when anyone who can still walk is running the other way? These are decisions made in a split-second by ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Yet those decisions can – and usually do – have an impact that lasts a lifetime. So what happens to these ordinary heroes once the newspaper headlines have disappeared and the medal-award ceremony is a distant memory? Mark Whittaker has written a unique account that follows men and women in amazing acts of bravery, and then the long aftermath as they deal with an array of issues – from guilt to post-traumatic stress – that were the furthest things from their minds when they made that split-second decision to risk their own life for someone else’s. Brave is, in every sense of the word, extraordinary – both in its approach, the people it describes and honours, and in the effect it has on the reader. It is compelling, complex, heart-breaking and uplifting.
About the Author
Mark Whittaker is the author or co-author of eight books, including Sins of the Brother: The Definitive Story of Ivan Milat and the Backpacker Murders, The Road to Mount Buggery: A Journey through the Curiously Named Places of Australia, and Love and Death in Kathmandu: A Strange Tale of Royal Murder.