I don’t want to put you off camping and for years now we have been extremely fortunate with perfect weather and not too many accidents,except for the year one of our camping buddies lost his thumb but that’s another story.
It was the year 2012 and we were all looking forward to our annual camping trip coming up. Its such a great time to get together with awesome fun friends and spend good quality time together for 2 weeks relaxing and enjoying this time together on the beautiful Murray River, Australia.
With all the years of our smooth camping holidays things were about to catch up with us with our good luck about to break. Only a few days into our camping trip I was having some lunch while enjoying the picturesque views of the river when all of a sudden I heard screams of pain. One of the children had fallen from the flying fox. He was raced into the nearest hopspital and the x-rays showed he had two broken arms. We were all shattered for him and his family as this unfortunately cut their trip short and left our dear little friend in quite a bit of plaster.We all helped pack up their camping gear ready for them to drive home the next day.
With this little camper friend now with two broken arms , who happens to be my daughter’s best friend, she insisted on seeing him before they left the hospital therefore this began our first of three visits to the hospital unbeknown to us that a few days later I would soon be in there with her as the patient.
Yes a couple of days later my daughter complained of a sore foot and found it difficult to put shoes on so we made a trip into town to purchase some ugg boots. The next day our trip seemed to be getting worse. A massive storm headed our way and it poured and poured and what was once a dusty dry site soon became a muddy flooded messy one. The kids seemed to find a way to enjoy it by sliding down mudslides and covering themselves in mud but this dirt and mud soon got the better of my daughter and some dirt must have got into a sore on her foot leading to a now hot and very painful foot. When I took another look it definitely looked infected to me and were soon on our way for the second time to the hospital to confirm my predictions correct but this time some bandages and antibiotics later we were good to get back to our campsite.
Ok so thats two trips to the hospital. Who may you think might be next, was it another child or one of the adults? Well after 2 days of not going in the water because of many sticks and logs floating down the river due to the heavy rains my husband was itching for a wakeboard. I really didn’t like the idea as I could still see some sticks and logs coming down the river, not as many but still enough to tell the kids its another day of no waterskiing. My husband insisted on going in and said it would be ok. Anyway we went for a drive up the river to sus it out and the river actually looked ok, seemed to be calming down, only the odd sticks floating by so we let him go for a quick wakeboard. Quite a few backrolls, 180’s and huge jumps later he had a massive stack. He didn’t move for a while, we quickly turned the boat around to race back to him. Luckily his head was facing up and just as we got back to him he moved and said he was ok. I believe he was briefly blacked out as he did not know what had just happened.. We told him he had a massive stack , I don’t think he hit any floating objects as it looked pretty clear but I believe he hit the water so hard he actually knocked himself out briefly. He said he was ok, so we cruised back to camp thinking all is good. It wasn’t until we got out of the boat and walked up the river bank to everybody else when I realised something definitely was not right with my husband’s head. He didn’t know where we were and when we got there. At first some other friends thought he was trying to be funny and didn’t realise that he had in fact lost his memory. He also couldn’t remember what we did last week or his date of birth and other little things you would normally know. It was scary as it seemed every 30 seconds he was asking the same questions “what happened,where am I?’ I drove him straight into the hospital for my 3rd visit now of this camping trip. The whole way in he kept repeating himself not remembering what he had just said and I had to explain to him every minute where we were going. I was really worried and could not wait to get in there for a head scan. They saw us straight away and the nurses remembered me. Funny that. I said “hi this time I’m here for my husband’ . They were amazing and we spent quite a few hours in there before they said we could go and in that time I found out that one of the nurses knew somebody I knew and we got talking and found out we actually had a few of the same friends and they are also good friends with my daughters new school principle. We’re about 4 hours drive away from home and almost in another state so small world I say.
Two days later my husband’s memory had finally come back to him except for the accident. He still to this day has no memory of it happening. He missed his watersports for those two days of resting his head and on one of those rest days we drove into town, bought him a helmet and spent the rest of the camping trip doing what he loves so much on these trips, getting out behind the boat.
That following year the weather was perfect and there were no trips to the hospital.
Below is a diary entry my daughter wrote on that trip.
