Freddy Shaw was running through his University of Sydney concert examination in his head when he watched a man collapse onto the ground at Village Park in Mona Vale and decided, without hesitation, to help.
Shaw, a 21-year-old Mona Vale local and current scholar at Pinchgut Opera, was on his way to his concert examination at the University of Sydney when the collapse happened across from the Mona Hotel on Park Street at 11:15am. He made it to the exam on time.
Stepping in when it mattered most
“He basically just fell straight onto his front and onto his head, and it looked quite concerning from there. His body was shaking quite a lot; obviously, there was something very wrong,” Shaw said. “I just rushed over, and I put him into a recovery position as I was calling triple zero. It was quite a difficult scene.”
The emergency operator instructed Shaw to count the man’s breaths, which came in at once every 10 to 15 seconds. The operator recognised this as a potential cardiac event and directed Shaw to begin CPR, something he had not performed since his scouts and surf life-saving days more than a decade ago.
He relied on that old training and followed the operator’s instructions carefully. Nearby bystanders ran to the closest B-Line bus stop to retrieve a public defibrillator. A ranger also stepped in to give Shaw a break during compressions.
Paramedics arrived five minutes later. The man was conscious by then, sustaining a head injury from the fall, and was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital. Shaw stayed to assist as long as he could, then left for his exam.
Cool under pressure, on stage and off
Shaw did not volunteer his own story. It was the bystanders who flagged what had happened. “When I arrived, Freddie had started CPR,” one told reporters. “He was a deadset legend, a young hero.”
When asked how the exam went after everything, Shaw responded simply: “Yeah, it was good.” He attributed his composure to his performance experience, saying it had helped him keep a cool head in high-pressure situations.
“I think I was lucky enough to be in a good headspace. I was able to just get straight into what I needed to do to help the poor man,” he said.
An unusual path, pursued with purpose
Shaw is candid about the road he has chosen. He acknowledges that pursuing opera in Australia is quite “tricky,” as opportunities are not as vast here as they are in Europe. But he has loved the art form and classical music since childhood and was not prepared to pursue something he was not passionate about.
The Mona Vale local is currently a scholar with Sydney’s Pinchgut Opera, a company renowned for staging rare Baroque and Classical masterpieces. The company has a reputation for developing serious young voices, and Shaw is among its current cohort.
The public defibrillators at B-Line bus stops along Pittwater Road and throughout the Northern Beaches are part of a network maintained for exactly this kind of emergency. If you ever need to locate one, the GoodSAM Responder app maps AED locations across Australia in real time.
Published 10-June-2026
