A fisherman who narrowly escaped with his life appeared unfazed and continued fishing after a plane door fell from the sky and landed metres away from him.
Locals watched in horror as the door of a small plane began to fall from the sky towards a fisherman at South Broulee Beach on the New South Wales south coast at about 9.30am on Friday.
The door of a small plane had broken off the aircraft and locals feared it could harm someone on the ground.
Murphy Shaw, 22, was visiting from Canberra to surf at South Broulee Beach and told Daily Mail Australia he was in the water with 10 other surfers.
“The plane was hovering overhead, which was quite common in that area,” he said.
“But there was a bit of a commotion in the water and all of a sudden I looked up and there was a door leading down to the land.”
The student said he initially thought he was coming “straight into the waves.”
“But when it got down a little bit you could see it was going to land on the beach,” Shaw said.
Murphy Shaw, 22, from Canberra (pictured), was surfing at South Broulee Beach this morning when he saw a plane door coming down at speed.
The student (pictured) said he thought the gate was going to fall into the waves, but as it got closer, he and the other surfers thought it was going to fall on a fisherman.
‘And it was going to land pretty close to the only guy on the beach, which was this guy who was fishing.
“We thought, ‘Oh no, it’s headed toward that guy over there.'”
The 22-year-old said it was at that point that everyone in the water tried to get the fisherman’s attention “with no luck” as he was about 100 metres away from the surfers.
“He didn’t duck for cover, he just kept fishing,” he said.
‘And the gate ended 20 meters behind him, but he just went about his business and kept fishing.
“He didn’t really care at all. He just cast his line again and kept fishing.”
Mr Shaw said that the moment he saw the door fall from the sky, it didn’t seem real.
“I guess it’s one of those weird, surreal moments where you think ‘that’s a glitch in the Matrix, I shouldn’t be watching that,'” he said.
“It’s a strange mix of emotions. Luckily, in the end there were no injuries.”
The student said that when the door landed it made a ‘big noise’ and a creaking sound, and the student believed it must have ‘landed on some piece of driftwood’.
The door crashed to the ground with a thud and a creak, falling into the bushes behind the sand and 20 metres from the fisherman (pictured, South Broulee Beach, on the New South Wales south coast)
The private plane returned to Moruya Airport after missing its gate because its latch was not “secured properly”.
Mr Shaw said that shortly after the plane door crashed to the ground in the bushes behind the beach, someone came and took the door away.
It is understood that he was taken back to the airport.
A Eurobodalla Shire Council spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the door had “detached” from a private plane.
“The pilot and passenger made a normal landing, returning safely to Moruya Airport,” they said.
‘The door was found in a forest just north of the airport.
‘The pilot informed airport staff that the door latch was not properly secured and apologised for any anxiety the incident may have caused.’
The spokesman said the council had reported the incident to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and they would decide whether to investigate.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman said: Daily Mail Australia said it had received the report about the plane.
“The ATSB decided not to conduct an investigation as it was considered unlikely to yield any further safety lessons,” they said.
‘The ATSB is not a regulator, it is an independent investigator whose task is to conduct ‘no fault’ investigations to improve transport safety.’
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