A group of backpackers in Australia started their New Year’s Eve celebrations with a shock, watching helplessly as their valuables sunk inside a rental SUV which slid off a barge headed to an island off the Queensland coast.
A video posted by Chloe Swift, a woman in the group, shows a car slowly rolling backwards off the barge as passengers exclaim in worry.
“All their stuff’s in there!” a woman can be heard saying in the video.
Swift wrote on Facebook that phones, wallets and passports belonging to some of the backpackers were inside the car.
“It was really horrible. A lot of people were shaken up,” Swift told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Manta Ray Fraser Island Barges, which operates the vessel, confirmed the incident occurred to the Brisbane Times. They said an internal investigation was ongoing but declined to comment further.
Katrina Lawrence was a passenger on the barge but not with the group of backpackers. Her car was next to the doomed vehicle and she said she was surprised the barrier had not been raised earlier.
“We were behind our car and my husband called out that the car next to us was rolling. It was rolling back to the bridge which was still down,” Lawrence said.
“A young guy tried to grab it by the bull bar but he didn’t have much luck. It skidded along for a bit, he let it go, and it proceeded to just roll over the back and into the water where it stayed up for about 30 seconds before it sunk down,” she said.
According to Lawrence, a jet ski and a few other boats raced to the spot where the car had sunk, but nothing could be done.
Lawrence also said no staff members were present to help as the car slid off but that a “quite cranky” employee told passengers to calm down.
In the video, a voice over the barge’s loudspeaker system can be heard saying, “Calm down, everyone! F***ing chill out.”
Manta Ray Fraser Island Barges did not respond to Global News’ requests by the time of publication.