I relaxed a bit when he asked for directions. I told him to follow the tramline right to the terminus. (A few months previously we had moved into Judge Jeffery’s home near the tram terminus and my old school, whilst we waited for our own home to be built.)
As we approached the turn, I told him that he could turn left at the next street, that’d take us to the tram terminus’.
When he didn’t turn into the street I said, ‘You’ve got one more chance to turn left at the next street and continue following the tramline’.
He jammed his foot on the accelerator and started the ascent to Mt Coot-tha. I said, ‘You are only wasting your time, because you’ll get bugger all out of me. I’ll walk before I’d give in to any of you. I can fight and I bite.’
He took no notice of me and kept speeding up the mountain. By the time we got to the kiosk all of the others were singing the latest songs. As we careered down a particularly curvy section of the road towards the television channels, I recall the words of the song were, I’m Falling and a split second later the driver miscalculated a hairpin bend and we really were falling. Actually, not only were we falling, we were soaring sixty feet over and down the side of the mountain.
I felt my head hit something and the fellow sitting on the passenger side held me close to him to prevent me from flying out the open window alongside of him. I remember seeing a huge trunk of a light grey coloured tree. Then I was sitting on the ground holding my head and an ambulance officer said, ‘Lie down, sweetheart, you’ve got head injuries’.
I put my hand to my face and head and I couldn’t feel anything wrong and I said, ‘No I’m alright. What do you want me to do, is everyone else okay?’
Another ambulance officer rushed over as I started to get to my feet, he placed his arms around my shoulders and waist and gently lowered me back onto the ground in a sitting position. As he did this he said, ‘Sit down, darlin’ we’re getting you a stretcher now’.
I insisted that I was fine, but that my arm was just a bit tender. He persisted and insisted that I stay sitting down. When I again told him that I was okay he said, ‘You’ve been out like a light for at least twenty minutes. Now just take it easy and just sit there for a while, okay?’ He added, ‘We’ll tend to your face in a minute’.
The driver of the car started to moan and yelled, ‘Forget that bitch, what about me?’
The ambulance man said to me ‘He’s a real charmer, what garbage bin did you drag him from?’ I looked around and it looked like a war zone. Robin was strapped into a stretcher and was carried up the hill to a waiting ambulance. The others were either lying or sitting holding different parts of their bodies in an effort to stop the pain. I was placed on a stretcher and as they carried me up the side of the mountain. I realised that one of the stretcher-bearers was Brian Cahill, the Channel Seven newsreader. He had apparently arrived at the scene of the accident just as we went over the mountain and he had telephoned for the ambulance. Luck had been on my side, if Mr Cahill hadn’t witnessed the accident God only knows what the outcome would have been. As far as I’m concerned, he saved my life.
The fellow who had been sitting alongside of me said ‘God your face is a mess’
I put my hands all over my face, but I couldn’t feel anything wrong with it, ‘What’s wrong with it?’‘Just wait until we get to the hospital and ask them for a mirror’.
I asked him what injuries did he have and he replied, ‘Internal, you hit your head on the top of the steering wheel and your jaw on the bottom of the steering wheel and as the car started to flip, you started to float out the window and I had to grab you to hold your head into my gut otherwise you would’ve been flung against a big gum tree. Your skull has busted something in my gut’.
I thanked him for saving me and he replied, ‘That’s okay’.
I was put into the ambulance and whisked away to the Royal Brisbane Hospital, I was told on the journey to the hospital that Robin was the one with the worst injuries she had a suspected broken pelvis, and shattered leg. It was approximately eleven-thirty at night when we got to the casualty of the RBH (Royal Brisbane Hospital) and the first thing I asked for was to notify my parents and if they could give me a mirror.
One-thirty rolled around and I think everyone in the greater Brisbane metropolis had come to gawk at my face. Everyone but my family and me, they had forgotten to notify my family and hadn’t bothered to bring me a mirror. At two-fifteen Edith and James walked in and on seeing me
Edith ‘Oh my God, look at your face’.
James just looked in total disbelief and said, ‘Shit.’
Amelia ‘Quick, give me a mirror please, I haven’t seen myself yet, these bastards won’t do a thing for anyone’.
As Edith fossicked in her handbag looking for a mirror, I told her and James what had happened.
Edith ‘What time was the accident?’
Amelia ‘About five past eleven’.
Edith ‘Don’t give me that, they rang me at about five to two and said that you had just been brought in and that the accident had happened thirty minutes ago’
Amelia ‘Bullshit, I’ve been sitting here since eleven-thirty pleading with them to call you, ring Channel Seven and ask Brian Cahill, he was the one who rang for the ambulance’.
I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t believe a word I said.
Edith ‘They said you’d have to stay in under observation, because of your head injuries’.
Amelia ‘Pigs bum I am, I’m not staying here one minute longer, I’m going home right now’.
Edith then handed me her little make up mirror and I nearly died of fright at the sight of my own reflection. I had a huge bump the size of a large duck egg on the right side of my forehead. Both my eyes were as black as the ace of spades, but my jaw was unbelievable. As Edith had described it later, it was the size of a big pineapple, but instead of it being yellow/orange it was totally black. It was swollen to three times its normal size and it sort of stretched down towards my chest.
My other injuries consisted of a broken collarbone and a dislocated right shoulder. The nurse strapped my shoulder and put my arm in a sling and I high-tailed it out of that hospital as fast as I could. When I arrived home, Edith went in to tell Dad that we were home. He was so angry with me that he refused to come out and talk to me let alone to look at me. That upset me more than being taken up to Mt Coot-tha against my will. He believed that I had willingly gone up to Mt Coot-tha, at one-thirty in the morning with four fellows.
The following day on the front page of the afternoon paper The Telegraph there was a photo of the crash. The write up made it sound as if I had been in the car with five fellows. Robin’s name was listed with the other four and my name was separate from theirs. I visited Robin in hospital a few times and she had multiple injuries to her pelvis, hip and leg. She had to have a pin inserted in her thigh and was in traction for weeks. I never saw Robin again after she was discharged from hospital and I never saw the fellows from the crash again.
If I live to be a hundred, I never want to see the driver again, unless I’m carrying a meat cleaver. I didn’t keep a copy of that newspaper report because it had the name of that bastard who obviously had no respect for anyone. His name has been removed from my memory, hopefully forever.
The mind is a wondrous thing, it can memorise and regurgitate at will, or it can choose to eliminate and forget. Unfortunately, my mind gets somewhat confused and I tend to remember most of the things I should forget and vice versa. Hopefully one day I will get it right. But I doubt that it will be in this lifetime.
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