“HE SINKS” — A rescue volunteer revealed Austin Appelbee was out of sight for nearly three minutes in the open sea.

It was, on balance, a story that invited some double-checking when it landed.

A 13-year-old boy paddles and swims for hours through rough swells to mount a rescue for his family after they were swept out to sea.

He was forced to abandon his kayak and life jacket halfway through.

He used everything from his girlfriend to Thomas the Tank Engine to motivate his marathon effort, his 4-kilometre swim labelled superhuman by rescuers.

He acknowledged prayer, faith and belief in god all played a role in keeping him positive as he battled exhaustion and overcame fear on his mission to save his family.

And he did this at the behest of his mum, who, having dispatched her son to raise the alarm, was doing her best to keep her remaining children from slipping into the sea and drowning.

And, just to top it off, it turns out the young fella’s swimming instructors recently failed him for his supposed inability to swim more than 350 metres.

There are six or seven points there which would give the most open-minded Hollywood screenwriter pause, let alone a sceptical editor.

But it turned out to be a remarkable good news story and has swept across the globe, generating headlines at the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other mastheads whose thoughts don’t often turn Australia’s way.

Why has this story resonated?

As the remarkable details of the Appelbee family’s experience came to light, it triggered a significant emotional response from readers, viewers and listeners.

“I had goosebumps,” media researcher and lecturer Glynn Greensmith told ABC Regional Drive this week.

As an academic specialising in how the media covers and influences mass shootings, Dr Greensmith said the spread of comparatively good news was unsurprising.

“The news cycle is a never-ending sewer of terrible, and we risk becoming subsumed by that,” he said.

“That’s not to be sniffed at; we all need that.”

Miracles do happen

Regional Western Australia has seen its fair share of similarly miraculous stories in recent years.

A four-year-old girl survived almost three weeks in captivity at the hands of a kidnapper.

A German backpacker walked out of remote bushland after 11 freezing nights with little food or water.

But even those incredible happy endings had their downsides.

To call Cleo Smith’s safe return a miracle almost doesn’t do justice to the exceptional police work which underpinned it, while the monstrous nature of Terence Kelly’s crime also casts a pall over the story.

And the remarkable recovery of Carolina Wilga prompted questions, uncomfortable for many, over why her story drew so much attention, compared to hundreds of other missing persons cases across the nation.

Austin and his family’s story comes with no comparable sharp edges, in a news cycle dominated almost uniformly by bad news.

“The right time, from the right place, with the right outcome,” Dr Greensmith said.

“We needed it.”

Parent’s worst nightmare

It’s no coincidence that those who experienced a significant emotional response to the family’s story have children of their own.

Geographe Bay, where the family was swept out to sea, attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year, the majority of those in the summer holidays.

But even for those without an intimate connection to WA’s South West, the Appelbees’ experience rings true — a family holiday along the coast, trying to wrangle the children and ensure they stay out of trouble.

The worst could have easily happened. This time last year, authorities were responding to a string of drownings along Western Australia’s southern coastline.

“All of us are trying to catch our breath, and imagine what Austin and Joanne went through,” Dr Greensmith said.

It’s where the focus shifts to just how remarkable Joanne Applebee’s response and conduct was, earning high praise for her ability to keep both a cool head and her children safe in a potentially disastrous situation.

It draws your mind to just how you would, or could, react faced with a similar crisis.

Busselton Mayor Phil Cronin, for instance, had his own tale to tell from Preston Beach, further up the coast.

“A friend’s flotation device for their kids went off,” he told the ABC this week, reflecting on the unusual story that had emerged from his city.

“I decided to be the hero and swim after it.

“I was only a few hundred metres out and I remember swimming against those waves and the wind.