He had to crawl to rescue.
An Australian hiker has been rescued after falling 20 feet into a waterfall, breaking his wrist and his leg. 54-year-old Neil Parker was walking alone near Brisbane on Sunday when he fell, breaking his wrist and his leg, which he describes as being ‘clean snapped in half’.
Losing his phone in the fall, Parker realised that his best chance of rescue was to get himself to a clearing. Being an accomplished walker, he managed to splint his leg using walking sticks. He had painkillers with him and a small supply of food and water.
Talking to reporters from his hospital bed on Wednesday, Parker revealed it took him two days to crawl to the clearing which was around two miles away. Saying, “I’d get about a metre, a metre-and-a-half, each time before I had to stop and take a break. I just couldn’t believe it. It’s only 3km but [it took] two days to cover 3km. I was thinking that I was never going to get there.”
He said his children were his main motivator to keep moving as he carried his leg to get to the clearing. “I had to carry my leg” Parker said, “and legs are very heavy when they’re not connected to anything – and [I was] trying to pick it up and get over rock and then use this elbow and this arm and just constantly struggling”.
He was finally spotted on Tuesday and taken to hospital, where his surgeons have said he is doing fine and that they were all amazed by his heroic survival effort.
