LUCY GREEN

The 23-year-old Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer from Australia found the body of a drowning victim in Sydney, 2003.

We’d just arrived at Stuart’s Point, near Coffs Harbour in New South Wales.

It was a family trip, an annual event and we’d stopped for a swim.

Dad had grown up here and raved about the place.

When we got to the beach I noticed what looked like a carcass – just a bunch of limbs lying by the water’s edge.

‘‘It must be an animal,’’ Dad said.

Then a wave came and washed it away and revealed a foot with some flesh hanging off it.

I screamed and it was a bit of a blur from then on.

The police said to try and stop it from getting washed back out to sea so we had to put some driftwood around it.

It was mostly just bones and it was a full body but it didn’t look like it at first because it was in an odd position.

The skin was grey from being in the water so long – the body had been in the ocean a few weeks by the time we found it.

The police said the man had drunkenly jumped off a pier on

Sometimes if I’m at the beach and there’s a bunch of driftwood or seaweed then I’ll think about it because that’s the image I have.

Lucy Green, right

New Year’s Eve. I remember being quite upset: Screaming and teary.

I wouldn’t say I think about it too often but sometimes the memory of it is triggered by random things.

I was so young at the time the reality of it didn’t register. Now that I think about it, it’s pretty awful.

Sometimes if I’m at the beach and there’s a bunch of driftwood or seaweed then I’ll think about it because that’s the image I have.

It’s a sad thing but it brings you together when you experience something like that with people you’re close to.

You realise how important life is and you should tell people you love them whenever you get the chance.