{"id":97,"date":"2023-11-30T16:41:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestar.test\/2023\/11\/30\/honour-for-rescue-hero\/"},"modified":"2023-11-30T16:41:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:41:00","slug":"honour-for-rescue-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/blog\/honour-for-rescue-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Honour for rescue hero"},"content":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t\tTuesday, December 18th, 2018<\/span> | Posted by Tayla Kershaw<\/a><\/span> \t\t\t<\/div>\n

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Honour for rescue hero<\/h1>\n

A MAN who rescued a drowning stranger from Western Port Bay has been awarded for his bravery.
Benjamin Dennis of San Remo recovered fisherman Ilija Pirvac in 2016 and received a bronze medal from The Royal Humane Society of Australasia at Government House, Melbourne, last Thursday.
\u201cI\u2019m proud that I saved the guy but it\u2019s embarrassing as well,\u201d he said.
\u201cIt was nerve racking going into the water but I couldn\u2019t let him die.\u201d
Mr Dennis was concreting during construction of his Saltwater Phillip Island restaurant at Newhaven on the evening of December 11, 2016 \u2013 Mr Pirvac\u2019s birthday.
At 7pm, Mr Pirvac, of Melbourne was fishing when he fell into the water, off Newhaven jetty. He could not swim and was swept away by the strong tide.
Mr Dennis, a surfer, jumped into the water with one of the fisherman\u2019s eskies and swam to him. But the man became difficult for Mr Dennis to hold as he tired and as the esky had filled with water and sunk.
\u201cHe was fully clothed and he was going under,\u201d Mr Dennis said.
\u201cThe water was still cold and I thought I would be floating up the bay with a dead body.\u201d
He tried to hold Mr Pirvac\u2019s head out of the water as Mr Pirvac was losing consciousness.
Mr Pirvac soon passed out as saltwater filled his lungs. Mr Dennis screamed for help, alerting nearby fisherman, Vaughan Platt of Cape Woolamai, who was a friend of Mr Dennis\u2019. He came to the rescue in his boat, accompanied by Chris Chudmore, who was eating tea nearby at the time.
By the time the boat arrived, the men in the water were several hundred metres from shore.
They were lifted into the boat and a Triple Zero operator instructed in the administration of first aid.
\u201cEveryone thought he was dead,\u201d Mr Dennis said.
\u201cThere were no signs of life for ages. He had blood all over him and his blood was all over me.\u201d
Mr Pirvac later regained consciousness and began vomiting. Paramedics arrived and took over his\u00a0treatment.
\u201cI just went back to work and had to keep going because I had some concrete setting,\u201d Mr Dennis said.
To thank Mr Dennis, Mr Pirvac, a steel fabricator, worked at his restaurant after the incident to repay him. Last Saturday evening, Mr Pirvac and 25 of his friends came to Mr Dennis\u2019 restaurant for a meal.<\/p>\n

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So proud: Benjamin Dennis (centre) received a bravery award at Government House in Melbourne last Thursday for rescuing a man drowning in Western Port Bay.
He is with, from left, his fianc\u00e9e Amy Cattermole, The Governor of Victoria, the Hon. Linda Dessau AC, his daughter Mali Dennis and the man he rescued, Ilija Pirvac.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Short URL<\/strong>: \/?p=26960<\/small><\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPosted by Tayla Kershaw<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ton Dec 18 2018. Filed under Featured<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\tYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYou can leave a response or trackback to this entry\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018 | Posted by Tayla Kershaw Honour for rescue hero A MAN who rescued a drowning stranger from Western Port Bay has been awarded for his bravery. Benjamin Dennis of San Remo recovered fisherman Ilija Pirvac in 2016 and received a bronze medal from The Royal Humane Society of Australasia at Government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}