British tourists dead after being swept out to sea near Great Barrier Reef

Two Brits have drowned off the coast of the Great Barrier Reef

The pair were swimming at a beach without lifeguards in Seventeen Seventy, a town named after the year James Cook arrived in Australia.

They were declared dead after being pulled from the water by a police rescue helicopter.

An Australian man has also been hospitalised and is in a life-threatening condition after being swept out to sea. He was airlifted to hospital with serious head injuries.

The two Brits who died are yet to be named.

Police are treating the deaths as non-suspicious, and are set to prepare a report for the coroner.

CapResuce, the emergency service that rescued the three men, described the mission as a "difficult one," and said the deaths happened "despite the best efforts of all involved".

"We're not sure whether the third person jumped into the water trying to perform a rescue," Darren Everard of Surf Life Saving Queensland told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Everard explained that it's "chaos in the water" in Australia, and encouraged tourists to "seek local knowledge" and swim between flags.