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Two British tourists have drowned off the coast of a popular tourist town at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef.<\/p>\n
A boy, 17, and a man, 46, were swept out to sea on Sunday while swimming at a beach without lifeguards in Seventeen Seventy – a town in Queensland named for the year Captain James Cook arrived in Australia.<\/p>\n
The pair were declared dead at the scene after being pulled from the water by a police rescue helicopter.<\/p>\n
An Australian man is also in a life-threatening condition after being swept out to sea, and was airlifted to hospital with serious head injuries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
While police revealed that the deceased were from the UK, their names have not yet been released.<\/p>\n
“Sunday’s mission was a difficult one,” CapRescue, the emergency rescue service that found the three men, shared on social media – adding that the deaths had occurred “despite the best efforts of all involved”.<\/p>\n
Police say the injured Australian man was from Monto, a town about 150 kilometres inland from Seventeen Seventy.<\/p>\n
“We’re not sure whether the third person jumped into the water trying to perform a rescue,” Surf Life Saving Queensland’s Darren Everard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).<\/p>\n
There is only one beach patrolled by lifeguards within a 50-kilometre radius of Seventeen Seventy.<\/p>\n
Police are treating the drownings as non-suspicious and will prepare a report for the coroner.<\/p>\n
One-hundred-and-seven people drowned in Australia last year, with 25% of them born overseas, according to Royal Life Saving Australia.<\/p>\n
Australia’s coastal fatalities mostly occur around creeks and headlands at high tide when “it’s chaos in the water”, Everard explained.<\/p>\n
Speaking to ABC, he encouraged tourists to “seek local knowledge” and swim between the flags.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n