By TANIA PHILLIPS
A STANTHORPE man has come a step closer to finding and saying thankyou to the people who saved his life after a crash south-west of Maryvale almost 13 years ago.
Following his appeal in last week’s Southern Free Times, Damien L. Malcolm got a message through the paper to contact a farmer (who did not want to be named) who was first on the scene that fateful October 22 morning in 2001.
“I dialled the number and waited nervously for it to answer,” Damien said.
“His wife picked up and, once I had told her my name, said she would get her husband.
“Once he reached the phone, he confirmed who I was and launched straight into his recollection of my accident.
“He said that he had always kept a diary, and after reading the Free Times newspaper had gone straight to it and looked up the date. Apparently his entry reads something like: ‘October 22nd, 2001. Pulled a young man from a car crash today out on the highway’.” Though his memories were quite a bit more detailed.
“Yeah, I’d just pulled up at the intersection on my way to Warwick to pick up some millet seed,” he told Damien.
“Next thing I know here comes this brown car along the highway. I took one look and realised that it wasn’t going to make the curve in the road. I watched as it just sailed straight into the embankment, no attempt to stop, and flew right up in the air. It came down on the bonnet, and as it did the doors flew open and spewed stuff everywhere.”
Damien said smelling strong petrol fumes, the farmer and another man on the scene decided to pull him from the car.
This was quite a revelation for the father of four, who had thought he had made it out on his own.
“Maybe my legs were caught up in the seatbelt,” he said.
“I remember being caught up or something. That’s when I had put the car mat to my head to try and stop the bleeding. All I remember is trying desperately to get out … then next thing I know I’m lying on a lady’s lap.”
Damien said the farmer said he and the second man had gone back to the car to make sure there was no-one else and when they came back a “middle-aged lady with darkish hair and wearing a blue sun-dress” was looking after him.
“He said she was asking if anyone had a mobile phone to call the ambulance and was talking to me.”
The local Maryvale Rural Fire truck had turned up too, apparently hearing the sounds of the accident from wherever he had been in Maryvale itself, and spoke to the farmer for a little while.
“It was after that apparently that the farmer had simply moved on, feeling that everything was under control,” Damien said.
“He had left before the police arrived, which led them to presume I must have crawled out on my own.
“While on the phone to the farmer I attempted to convey my thanks for his help that day, and that what he did for me could never be repaid, but the humble farmer simply shrugged it off – ‘I did what I had to at the time.’
“I will be forever grateful to that farmer, both for saving me on the day of my accident, and coming forward last week to help fill in some of the blanks in my own memory. He’s a true hero.”
