‘No warning’ on beach where dad and son drowned

Friends of a father and his teenage son who drowned while on holiday in Australia have told an inquest they saw “no warning signs” at the popular beach.

Robin Reed, 46, tried to rescue his son Owen, 17, before the pair from Blackwood, Caerphilly county, were swept out to sea in Queensland on 13 April 2025, after sea conditions “turned in an instant”.

At a joint inquest at Gwent Coroner’s Court, Michael Evans and his wife Shayane said they had been on a day trip with the family to Round Hill Head, Seventeen Seventy, in Queensland, and saw “no warning signs” or “signs saying we couldn’t swim there”.

Concluding the inquest, area coroner Rose Farmer said both had died by misadventure.

Mr Evans, who jumped into the water with Robin Reed to try and save Owen, recalled how “one second he was there and the next he wasn’t,” in a statement read to the court.

“It turned in an instant, huge waves started coming in,” said Mr Evans.

“The water felt like a bus hitting me, it was too rough to swim in. There was wave after wave rolling in the water,” he added.

Mr Evans said he was repeatedly smashed into the rocks by the water before being rescued by a tourist. But Robin and Owen could not be saved.

The court heard the Reed family had travelled from the UK to meet Mr and Ms Evans and their children in Brisbane, and the families had gone for a day trip to the beach.

Ms Evans said there were no danger warnings as they walked down to the beach.

She said the waves were not “overly big” and “at no time did I have any worries”.

She said she recalled Owen had been standing in the water, about a metre away from two other boys.

Ms Evans said she was “not sure if a wave hit him” but she could see him “starting to drift off in a rip”.

She then recalled seeing Owen trying to swim back to the beach but “he wasn’t going anywhere”.

Ms Evans alerted the emergency services who sent police, fire and rescue crews and a recovery helicopter to the scene, the court heard.

During the inquest, a pathologist gave a cause of death for both father and son as “consistent with drowning”.

Area coroner Ms Farmer said: “Robin Reed died on 13 April from the effects of drowning whilst trying to rescue his son who had got into difficulty in the sea.

“Owen Reed died on 13 April from the effects of drowning when sea conditions worsened and he was swept out to sea.”