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The last thing 10-year-old Athena Hardani remembers before the boat that was supposed to take her to a new life in Australia keeled over in the ocean is her little sister’s face.

“I learned to swim in school, but my sister Mobina didn’t,” the Iranian said Thursday after surviving the sinking off Indonesia. “The only news I have is that my father is still alive and they say I will see him tomorrow.

“But my heart is sad because my mother and sister are not here. I know nothing about them.”

The Hardanis were among around 250 migrants on board a people-smuggling boat that was heading for Australia’s Christmas Island when it sank at the weekend. Only 47 people are known to have survived.

Athena was rescued within hours by a passing fishing boat, along with 33 others, but her father Mohammad spent three days clinging to the wreckage before being picked up by a ferry which happened to be in the area.

The pair, who are believed to be the only related survivors, are due to be reunited by Indonesian authorities on Friday.

By Thursday evening, rescuers had pulled nearly 90 rotting and bloated bodies out of the ocean, and the survivors told harrowing tales of suffering.

Athena’s father Mohammad, a 36-year-old welder from the Iranian city of Ahvaz, said that letting go of his eight-year-old younger daughter was the hardest thing he had ever done.

“I think my wife had a heart attack from shock, but there was nothing I could do for my little girl.”

It was the sheer number of people on board that caused the vessel -- built for just 100 -- to keel over when it became top-heavy, survivors said, contradicting earlier accounts that blamed bad weather.

“Mobina and I were below,” said Athena. “She was laughing and I still remember her face.

“My father pushed me out and then tried to reach for Mobina, but he could do nothing,” Athena said from a hotel in Surabaya. “The boat was lying on its side and lots and lots of people -- many children -- were clinging to it.”

Authorities and some survivors have said that crew members grabbed life vests and swam off, but Mohammad Hossein Aslani said the captain had tried to help, swimming into the floating debris to retrieve a box filled with lifejackets.

“He tossed them to survivors, but there weren’t enough for everyone,” said Aslani, a 25-year-old Iranian. “After that I don’t know whether the captain swam off or survived.

“Because everyone was huddled together on the keeled boat, all the weight was on one side, and every time there was a big wave the boat would flop violently and some people would fall in and drown.”

Six hours into the ordeal a passing fishing boat approached to help, but stopped at a distance when it saw how many people would be desperate to climb in.

Then the migrants’ boat finally capsized and Athena, her father and many others were knocked into the water.

Athena’s father swam back to the wreckage and was pulled back up.

“The first thing I did was to ask about Athena, and one of the men said she had swum to the fishing boat and he had seen her being pulled into it,” said Hardani from a hotel in Jember where immigration authorities were holding him.

“That is what gave me the will to survive.”

When the waves finally tore the boat apart many more passengers, leaving only 13 survivors clinging to wreckage.

“We spent three days and two nights that way,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t leave my little girl in this harsh world, I must live. I owe her my life’. On the third day we were picked up by a passing ferry.”

The would-be asylum seekers -- the majority Afghans and Iranians but including a few Arabs and Turks -- said they came to Indonesia to buy passage on illegal boats from people-smugglers in Jakarta’s Jalan Jaksa neighbourhood.

Some, like Athena and her family, had been in Jakarta for only a month. Others had spent several years in the country, trying to raise money for the illegal sea journey, which costs between $2,500 and $6,000.

Local reports and a military spokesman have said that three soldiers are being questioned over allegations they helped get the asylum seekers on board.

“What was strange is that we were never stopped -- not once,” said Aslani. “The people who got us on the boat all had guns and badges they would flash and pass through everywhere.”

Disasters involving desperate migrants trying to reach Australia are common in Indonesia.

Many try to head for Christmas Island, which is closer to Indonesia than to Australia, even though nearly 50 would-be migrants are believed to have died in wild seas during a shipwreck there in December 2010.

“My father is the kindest man in the world,” said Athena. “When other people were running for their lives, he was thinking only of me.”

Agence France-Presse