The near-drowning happened at the Steamer Basin on Saturday while Ravensbourne firefighter Glen Turner was having a coffee with his young family.
‘‘We saw a guy jumping in off the wharf there.
‘‘Then I heard him ... thrashing around yelling: ‘Help, help'.
‘‘He stopped moving and went under ... so I got my shirt and shoes off and jumped in,'' Mr Turner, a self-employed composites engineer, said.
He managed to drag the larger man about 20m through the water to the Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours wharf, where two other men assisted in getting him out.
It was ‘‘a bit of a struggle'' to get him in, he said.‘‘When I jumped in, there was no-one around.
‘‘I was thinking, ‘When I get to him I'm going to have to get behind him so he doesn't pull me down'.
‘‘It wasn't until I was coming back in that a few people sprouted out of nowhere [to help].''
The pair were in the water for about 15 minutes.
Mr Turner was hesitant to call himself a hero but agreed that if he was not there, the man might have died.
‘‘At the time, you don't think about [it]. You're in the moment. You do what you do.
‘‘I just happened to be there and the man is all right. That's what's good about it.''
Police and ambulance staff attended to the man, believed to be in his 50s, when he was out of the water.
He was not taken to hospital.
He had ‘‘taken on a lot of water'' and seemed a bit agitated, Mr Turner said.
A nearby cafe gave Mr Turner and his family free coffee and a gift voucher for his good deed.
Would he do it again?
‘‘In a heartbeat, no doubt about it.''
