Austin Appelbee, a 13-year-old boy from Australia, last week swam 2.4 miles in rough waters and ran for 1.2 miles to get rescue services to find his family who were stranded in the ocean. First responders called his swim “superhuman,” and doctors told him it was the equivalent of running two marathons.

 “I don’t think it was actually me doing that,” Austin said in a video with 7 News. “It was God the whole time. I kept on praying, I kept on praying.”

Austin said that while he was swimming, he told God he would get baptized, and added that he went to church the following Sunday. 

Austin, his mother Joanne, 12-year-old brother Beau, and 8-year-old sister Grace were on a vacation in Quindalup, Australia, when, on Jan. 30, they took their kayak and inflatable paddleboards out on Geographe Bay, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports. At the time, the waters were calm, so they left their picnic basket, food, and water on the beach.

Soon, though, the waters became rough and the kayak flipped. It also began filling with water and the family was pushed farther and farther out to sea.

Austin tried to swim, dragging the rest of his family in the kayak, back to shore before his mother sent him to go get help. She said it was one of the hardest decisions she ever had to make. 

"I knew he was the strongest and he could do it,” she said. "I would have never went because I wouldn't have left the kids at sea, so I had to send somebody."

Austin let go of the kayak and took off his life jacket, which he said was impeding his swimming. He swam for four hours.

"I was trying to get the happiest things in my head, and trying to make it through, and not the bad things that would distract me," Austin told ABC, adding that at one point he was thinking about Thomas the Tank Engine. 

"And at this time, you know, the waves are massive, and I have no life jacket on … I just kept thinking 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming,’” he said.

When he got to the beach, he said, he couldn’t find anyone to ask for help “since there were a lot of foreign people.” He had to sprint another mile or so to get his mother’s phone, and he called emergency services.

"I said, 'I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats, my family's out at sea.' I was very calm about it," Austin said.

Due to the rough waves, it was extremely difficult for rescuers to spot the family. The first responders said that Austin’s description of the kayak and paddleboards helped them locate his family.

The Appelbees were adrift for 8-10 hours before help came. Joanne tried to keep the mood positive by telling jokes and laughing, but as time wore on, she became sure that Austin had died and that the rest of them would die too. 

"My Mum is in Ireland … I remember looking up at the sky, going, 'Mum, if you can hear me, just light that holy candle for me,’” Joanne said.

Joanne had tied the family to the paddleboards using leg braces, but about five minutes before the rescue vehicles arrived, the family was separated. 

Beau explained what happened.

"Towards the end, a big wave hit all of a sudden, and my little sister and I were, like, on a weird angle, and it flipped us off, and we floated away from Mum," he recalled.

Joanne could hear Grace screaming as the rescue boats arrived but couldn’t hear Beau. 

"I called out to kill the engine, and all of a sudden, I heard this little voice … and we picked them up, and it was the best feeling in the world,” she said. "But I still didn't know about Austin … So it was very, very frightening."

Meanwhile, Austin was at the Busselton Health Campus. He had passed out on the beach after some women had given him some food, and when he woke up without his family, he thought that they had died. 

"I had a lot of guilt in my heart,” he said. “I thought, 'Oh man, I wasn't fast enough.'"

Soon, though, he received the news that they had survived, and he was reunited with his mom and siblings.

Austin is currently using crutches to support his legs, and the rest of his family sustained minor injuries. 

“I didn’t think I was a hero,” Austin commented to BBC. “I just did what I did.”

Joanne said she is concerned that the experience will mentally scar her children.

"And I just hope that [the experience] doesn't come back later on to hit them harder than it should,” she said. "Because as I said to everybody, we made it, we're alive, and that's the most important thing.”