Life can take us down many roads.

I thought I had it made, a fortune obtained by the selling of property which had risen by 60% within two years. It was jointly owned with my brother, and I entrusted him to make the sale and return to me my share of the profit.

A month went by, and I approached him about my finances, he informed me he had used all the money to purchase land. As I was in no hurry to obtain the cash, I settled for that. I saw myself as a trusting person and property was a secure investment. A year later the land was sold for double the buying price. I had a larger fortune and awaited the proceeds of the sale to put a deposit in obtaining property for myself.

In the meantime, I borrowed against the outcome, used my car as security and bought a business. In consultation with my brother we agreed that he would run the Electrical company for the first year and then within a year both of us would work together to expand the business. . In this period he would have given me the profit from the sale of the property and I would repay the bank.

A year later after having a fortune, not returned, by a family member I was now in my car, flattened by a semitrailer. The semi-trailer turned over on my vehicle on the Pacific Highway, in New South Wales Australia, leaving me trapped under all of its contents. This load was to cover my car for several hours before I would be rescued.

The roof of the car was crushed to millimeters above my body. I laid flat from the front seat to the back seat, as the back of the front seat collapsed to a backward position on impact. The huge body of the semitrailer collapsed on my car dragging it down the hill in the accident which occurred on that cool and clear June night on the far North Coast Road of New South Wales less than an hour drive from the Queensland border.

In the dark, I laid without the possibility of movement. My right shoulder blade was broken, blood surging out from: my forehead, right arm, right leg as the chin blade had broken through my skin, and left big toe. The broken bones of the shoulder blade were pressed against the top of the now flat car seat. The protruding bone, just below the knee of the immobile right leg, was soaked with blood pumping out of my leg and the broken left foot, big toe, was trapped under the brake peddle. The front body of the car was pressed towards the ground and covered the lower part of my torso from the hip to the feet.

I remained a captive in this position for over three hours as a rescue team worked on recovering me from the carnage.

The paramedic was to later relate to me "I am amazed you survived". He then added" I could see the blood pumping out of your body in several places and all you did was moan "my let toe, my left toe".

The first of my rescuers was a local resident who lived about 100 meters off this highway. I was to read, two years later as I sat in a Vietnamese’s restaurant in Sydney, that he had been murdered with a bullet to the back of the head in the early hours of the morning. At the time of my incident two years earlier, his voice was a comfort and a reassurance that all would be well, even though I did not lay eyes on him until weeks later when he visited me in hospital with his wife.

The first thought that came to my mind while I was pinned under that wreckage was ‘why am I in bed, I was only just driving’. I then tried raising my head only to hit it immediately on the roof of the car. I instinctually shouted out, “what happened, where am I”, while at the same time I felt the top of the car press against my upper body, as a person walked on the load covering the car. In reply came a voice “there’s someone under here”, followed by “there’s a car at the bottom of the load”.

I then heard the reassurance voice “don’t worry mate, you were in an accident” followed by “is there anyone else in the car with you.”

In the period, I was in the car, I lived through a daze of voices from reassurance to confusion, mechanical noises with people shouting in the distance. I remembered the journey in the ambulance, the movement to the operation theatre, and its bright overhead lights. Later I was to learn about how the accident occurred, the closure of the highway for twelve hours, the incidents with the police, and the occasion with the paramedics.

Entering the hospital in June and leaving it in September was in itself a story yet to be told.

I remember waking up in a room of bright lights. An oxygen mask covering my nose and mouth, and a feeling that I was floating above the bed overcame me. As I opened my eyes, I felt too vague to understand what was occurring, but I could recall at first the voice of my brother and then seeing his face. “How are you” was quickly followed by “I brought you a clean shirt”. Here I was laying in bed, a mask over my mouth and nose with wires sticking out of my body connected to various machines around the bed. My body consisted of an immobile left shoulder, a massive bandage around my right arm running between my elbow and armpit, a bandage covering my head, a pin in my left big toe and my right leg totally covered by a white cloth. This hid the pins holding my skin together running along the front of my right leg, from the knee to foot and my comfort was “I brought you a clean shirt”.

My immediate reaction to consciousness was “I am going to vomit” and did it immediately, as the mask was being removed. A pink sticky substance ousted out of my mouth, covered the sheet and mask at the same time and this was followed by unconsciousness. The rest of the time in intensive care, was spent drifting in and out of consciousness, feeling as though I was floating for the whole period. The doctors said later on, it was morphine doing its job.

A week later I was in a room by myself. A bandaged right leg on a machine that moved up and down to keep my broken leg stimulated. A bandage on my right arm and a patch on my forehead. The next three months in hospital was an adventure of joy, mishap, tragedy, singing, and the meeting of characters, who I have never come across again.

In that time, I was visited by the police on two occasions, the initial rescuer at the accident. Other visitors included my ex de facto and nine-year-old daughter for a week, and my brother three times on his way to either playing golf or visiting the casino.

Such was the extent of visitors from the outside world. Mind you I was over a thousand Kilometres from my usual place of residence in Sydney.

Someone from the hospital had kept a cutting from the local newspaper on the accident and this was given to me. Another cutting concerning the accident was also published three weeks later, which I also kept. Two years later, the most tragic and disturbing article concerned my rescuer. This was accidentally discovered by me when I was having dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant, on my way to Sydney University where I was studying law. As I was consuming my meal, I began reading a newspaper that had been left on the table by an earlier diner. I came upon the article on page two, which wrote about his demise. Two days earlier in the morning, he had been discovered outside of his house in the front yard, shot in the back of his head. 

In these two years, I was to walk through living on a road full of experiences with an open mind. This was to change my complete outlook on my existence and the way I looked at my life cycle. 

This was an event that made me aware of the life I lived was that of looking to the future, but now I live my life to enjoy the present.