Moments after take-off, the engine failed and the plane carrying eight people crashed. In the 16 seconds it took for the plane to fall, Mr Cook turned to Miss Dear and told her to focus on his instructions. He clipped his harness to hers and told her to brace herself using his body to cushion the fall. Miss Dear, who is still recovering physically and emotionally from the accident, said she was thrilled that Mr Cook was being recognised.

"He was an amazing person and he was going to go on to do amazing things himself but now he can't," she said. "I am 100% certain he could have taken measures to save his own life but he didn't, he saved mine. There aren't many people who would put their life on the line for a stranger." Mr Cook's father, Mark, has emailed the Dears to say they would never know how much it meant to see his dead son honoured by the award.

The second posthumous Star of Courage has been awarded to Kerri-Anne O'Meley, who died from multiple stab wounds inflicted by her estranged husband. She was able to save her 13-year-old daughter from a similar fate and whisper to her 12-year-old son that she loved him. Miss O'Meley and her two children were staying with her parents, Donna and Sydney O'Meley, in Newcastle, NSW when her estranged husband slipped into the house through the garage.

He said he had come to talk but he had brought gloves and a knife with him. Miss O'Meley's parents heard their daughter cry out and ran into her room, where they too were stabbed in a frenzied attack — Sydney O'Meley fatally. Donna O'Meley, who survived the attack and will accept the Star of Courage on behalf of her daughter, remembers the last time she saw her alive in the small hours of June 17, 2005. She was covered in blood but had managed to throw herself between her 13-year-old daughter and her knife-wielding husband.

"My daughter didn't stop fighting for a minute. She was stopping him from stabbing her daughter." Miss O'Meley died with 19 stab wounds but her children were safe.

"It doesn't take the pain away," said Mrs O'Meley. "But I do feel so proud and honoured that she should get such an award. I saw how brave she was. "The last time I saw my daughter, she was being stabbed protecting her own daughter … Kerri devoted her life to those children. She lived and she died for them, simple as that." A survivor of the Sea King helicopter disaster almost three years ago will also receive the Star of Courage, for dragging another man from the burning wreckage.

Although severely injured by the impact and restricted by choking black smoke, Leading Seaman Shane Warburton, of the Canberra suburb of Theodore, dragged a gravely hurt fellow passenger clear of the burning cabin. Villagers restrained him when he tried to return to the burning wreckage to help others.

Mr Warburton, who was discharged from the navy last year, was one of two survivors. He said he did not consider himself a hero. "I am honoured to receive this award, but what I wish is that all my mates and colleagues were alive with me today," Mr Warburton said in a statement. The Star of Courage is awarded by the Governor-General for "conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril".