While boarding a dinghy off the coast of Phuket just weeks ago, I met a young Australian bloke from my hometown on the Gold Coast. Manfred Neustifter, a 23-year-old trainee, known to his friends and colleagues as "Richie", was in charge of beach safety and watersports at one of Phuket's most exclusive residential enclaves, one where guests pay up to US$8,000 per day.

We had something in common. We were both young Aussies doing the things we loved, on an island we currently call home. We were bound to cross tracks some time again soon, but I never expected that on our second encounter we'd be discussing one of the world's most catastrophic natural disasters of all time. "Call it luck, call it fate, or whatever," Richie said, "but I had been studying these waves [tsunami] just weeks ago, and I knew what had to be done."

Perched atop a lifeguard tower, it was impossible not to notice a sudden drop in the tide. The water rapidly receded from the shoreline, leaving sealife stranded upon the sand and coral emerging high above the water. Many of those who noticed this wandered down to the water's edge to collect shells and take a closer look. Others lay on their deck chairs, oblivious to their surroundings as they soaked up the morning sun.

Sensing something was amiss, Richie phoned the manager of the beach and boating activities, who was chartering out at sea at the time. Still on his mobile phone, he was down from the tower, yelling and dragging people from the beachfront, trying to warn them of what was to come. "No one knew their life was in danger. No one wanted to go anywhere. There was a French guy lying on the deck chair who couldn't understand me. I told him: 'Big wave … coming … now.'" Richie eyes bulged as his hands shaped a wave and moved it across his body.

The tide was only out for about five minutes before the first surge of water came through. He'd managed to get about 30 guests and staff off the beachfront and out of harm's way, at this point, and grabbed another stunned guest in his arms as the water gushed through about to knock him from his feet. Both his studies and his surfing experience told him that, once the first surge of water swept back out to sea, the place was still far from safe, and continued moving people back from the water's edge.

"We had four points where the crowds gathered," he said. "It was very difficult to control them all. Many of the staff and guests were trying to clean up — collecting deck chairs and dinghies that had been washed about. Others moved towards the beach to take pictures. Curiosity was the worst thing. Because of the commotion I created on the beach, more people were coming down to see what was going on. I was telling everyone, 'Stay back!'"

By the time the tide had receded a second time, reports of tsunamis across the Indian Ocean were coming through. And there were predictions of more waves to come. Shortly after, with everyone gathered safely at the tennis courts, Richie was on his pushbike, heading over the hill in search of his Thai "mum and dad"— the family he had been living with just one beach to the north. His bike was halted at the bridge by yet another surge of water, but he finally made it down to Bang Tao, the bay that had been home to his friends and colleagues, as well as an office base, since he arrived.

"I was wary, but I thought to myself 'I've got to check this out.'" He arrived to encounter utter silence. No one. Nothing. The place he called home now resembled a demolition zone. The sea had been swirling furiously two metres above ground level for hours. People, cars, jetskis, boats and parts of houses had been mashed about and dumped hundreds of metres inland. "There were powerlines and trees lying everywhere," Richie said, a grim look on his face. "It was chaotic."

With no idea of where anyone might have been evacuated to, or indeed, if anyone in the area had survived at all, Richie spotted one of the company fuel barges and the enormous leisure boat he had slept aboard the previous night. Both were being taken by the tide and were headed for the rocks out at sea.

When an engineer motored around to join Richie in the bay, a new rescue effort immediately got under way. "I knew that if the fuel barge hit the rocks, the spill would be a disaster." The two of them secured the barge, and then headed out to save Dewi Laut, a magnificent, but now stranded, 350-tonne, 150ft junk, the property of a villa owner at the complex Richie had just left. These two inexperienced individuals, in horrendous sea conditions, reversed a vessel usually crewed by 12 people away from the rocks and drove it to a safe harbour 50 kilometres distant.

"The boat is usually crewed by Indonesians," he told me. "So there were no labels on the boat at all; just different coloured buttons. We were so close to the rocks, I thought it was all over."

Once aboard the boat, he got just three sentences through to his boss: "I'm aboard Dewi Laut. I'm backing the boat out with the anchor down. I've never done this before." With the phone lines jammed, a text message came through only minutes later: "GOOD LUCK."

"I remember thinking," said Richie: 'If this isn't my Shipmaster 5 test, then what could be?'"

The western coastline of Phuket was devastated. "We weaved between thousands of beach chairs along the way." They passed Patong, where streams of sun lounges, coconuts, bits of houses and floating debris flowed from the bay. Although the boat obstructed their view, both of them kept a keen eye out for any survivors. "The sun had set by the time we made it to Chalong," he said.

Today, in Bang Tao, local Thai villagers and Western residents alike have worked together to restore the peaceful, pleasant community they lost last Boxing Day. Some wander about in often forlorn hope that the loved ones they lost might show up alive. Together, we grieve for the locals who ran to the water's edge to collect fish moments before they were swept away, for the tourists who were caught completely unawares, and for those who lost their lives saving others. But as a community, we work diligently to restore the island to the way it was, the way it remains on the 90 percent of Phuket that was not directly affected by the destructive waves.

Stories of heroism such as Richie's will be told time and time again, as this tragedy unfolds. But the often forgotten ones are those who remain—the Thais out there today working tirelessly to return Phuket to normalcy. Together, these people display the perspective on Phuket that should be echoing across the continents.

"The sea can be deadly," as Richie remarked. "We now know its power. Everybody has read about it and seen the TV coverage. But the power of the human spirit that is seen across Phuket today far outweighs the power of that wave. And this is a story that still needs to be told."