14m plunge: man falls off cliff

14m plunge: man falls off cliff, originally uploaded by Sutto 007.

14m plunge: man falls off cliff
February 15, 2009

A 70-year-old man has been airlifted to hospital suffering hypothermia after spending the night at the bottom of a southern Sydney cliff following a 14-metre fall.

The man spent the night on the rocks at the bottom of Cronulla Point, at the southern end of the beach, after falling 14 metres from the top of the cliff sometime on Saturday night.

A passer-by alerted emergency services just before 7am (AEDT) on Sunday.

The man had fallen from the cliff walk known as The Esplanade, near the intersection with Elizabeth Place.

"He's fallen down there sometime during the night," an ambulance spokesman said.

"We're not sure of the circumstances but, obviously, a bystander has called us after hearing him calling, and they've called us.

"We've found him in a fairly confused and semi-conscious state."

The man is now in St George Hospital in a serious but stable condition, suffering hypothermia.

It was not yet known if he suffered other injuries as a result of the fall, the ambulance spokesman said.

(I was down at the beach on Sunday morning taking photos at the rock pools in the background, as I was leaving to go home I heard sirens and decided to investigate, I started walking around the rocks and was told to go away and dont take any photo's, so as this went against my grain I decided to change locations and start taking photo's. I met up with a guy some 20 minutes later who claimed to be a pro from the "Daily Telegraph", I offered some of my photo's to him. He proceeded to copy my photo's to his portable hard drive and then delete my photo's from my card, oops, so most of the photo's I took that morning were deleted from my card, he does however have a copy that I now need to go and pick up from him)