Well, it's probably been 3 or so weeks since my last confession, nearly 7 since the accident, and gratefully my memory is waning. Once Andrea and I had been extricated from the car, we were both strapped to stretchers, and fitted with neck braces. Into the waiting ambulance ,(our girls were in another ambulance in company with a good Samaritan :Lian), and off to Mackay Base Hospital. Once in hospital, I thought my 2 or 3 hours in said neck brace staring at the ceiling while a battery of tests were carried out, was pretty bloody uncomfortable. Needless then to say, that Andrea's endurance of 4 days must've been unimaginable. In that time, she had the equivalent of a water pipe shoved between broken ribs, X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans etc etc, and as soon as they had cleared her of spinal injuries, it was " well, up you get, off home you go, nothing more we can do for you here!"
After being in one position for 4 days, walking was one of those things that needed relearning.
At this stage, although the girls and I had been discharged days earlier, I still had no bed for her to sleep in.
In that time (that Andrea was in hospital), the girls and I had been in a Red Cross room, the granny flat of the business partner of my prospective employer, and then finally the farmhouse of the cane farm of said business partner. The farmhouse was unfurnished, but Nick borrowed us a couple of beds from the aforementioned granny flat.
The day after the accident, I was at my lowest ebb, trying to organize insurances, somewhere for the girls and I to sleep, a hire car, to get some clothes for everyone from the wrecked caravan, the reptiles from the wrecked caravan, find a lost cat etc, and somewhere in all the phonecalls, I had rung my Mum, who, as it happened had just started hols from her job, and was on the plane to Mackay the following day. What a godsend! I don't think we could have got through the next 6 weeks without her.
In the meantime Lian, the lady who looked after our girls for the hour or so while they were getting Andrea and I out of the car, and further looked after the girls for some hours at the hospital(and bought Erin some strawberries and nickers, and Beccy some dummies, flowers, drawing books), came to my aid the following day, to drive me to where the wrecks were being kept(for clothes and reptiles), then to the crash site(to look for my wallet and our lost cat)(Lian had already been there earlier in the day to collect more of our flotsam and look for Pirie), then she drove me to the airport so I could collect a hire car, casually commenting that my appearance may not be conducive , as I was wearing a soiled green hospital shirt, my blood stained jeans from the day before, and hands, arms and head adorned with various abrasions, contusions, etc, and, of course in dire need of a shower. Taking her comments on board, I pulled another shirt over top of everything in the airport car park, and set off determined to procure some wheels. After we dropped some stuff at her house, I returned to the hospital to rescue our girls(it was now 8pm, we had all been discharged around 10 am), and off to the Red Cross room, more sorting of rescued stuff, a well needed shower, and late to bed.
The following day, up early, and with the girls in tow, off to get some essentials, phone charger, sunglasses, thongs for both girls, and, oh, weetbix and a bottle of milk(which the girls ate separately, for breakfast). Back out to the crash site, with the little cat locator remote that Lian and I retrieved from the van the day before, and with some perseverance , and a lot of scratching around in 8 foot tall guinea grass, we found Pirie huddled down in a spot, not twenty metres from the scar we had left on the landscape 2 days earlier. Relief was overwhelming, knowing I could tell Andrea we were all accounted for.
Now that my phone was charged, I returned a call from my prospective employer who had organised, a place for us to stay,and somewhere where we could store our recovered belongings. And so began our month of rural recuperation 30 ks south west of Mackay.
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