Bushwalker Wounded: Neil in a Haystack

slopes around Mount Nibbo flourished with new life.

“Wild orchids and Hibiscus flowers sprout through the underground, dazzling brushstrokes”

of pink and yellow against the rich green canvas. I, in the canopy, cockataus and coalesce lounge among the branches of the gum trees, which sway softly in the warm breeze. Meanderin through the heart of the forest, a creek tumbles downhill over a staircase of large, moss-doupled boulders.

Periodically, the water plunges over spectacular drops, collecting in dark, circular pools fringed by giant ferns. Seeking is way upstream, navigating the jumble of boulders with practice agility is 54-year-old bushwalker, Neil Parker.

He scrambles on all fours, pulling himself past one obstacle, before hopping onto the

next. His movements are smooth, fluid, he is comfortable on this terrain. Neil reaches a tall rock face, bisected down the middle by a ribbon of cascading white water. You're walking to this beautiful circular ponds, and this massive 30-meter black slab

rock face in front of you, with a tree line branching off to the right-hand side. His gaze zigzags up the sloping black edifice. The rock face is high, but not vertical all the way up. After about 20 feet, it drops back to a gradient that is easily walkable. From there, it's a relatively simple scramble the rest of the way.

Neil follows a path that leads around the side of the waterfall, then up to the points where the rock face flattens to a shallow gradient. He steps onto a ledge. It feels solid enough. He weighs up his next move.

I'm just standing there, I'm just looking about where I'm heading off to next. Look down, I saw my left foot sliding, I looked up to find something to grab, and there was nothing. My left foot slipped. Suddenly, his foot shoots out from underneath him.

Before he has time to steady himself, he starts sliding backwards. There are no handholes, no way to stop what is happening. The dried algae, coated in the rock, is crumbling beneath his boots, forming a treacherous slippery surface, but is leading him inexorably towards a sheer 20 foot drop. It looks straight away down that curved rock face that I knew I was headed for.

I don't look down there, and I just thought this is going to be bad, Neil. You are going to be seriously injured when you land.

Never wondered what he would do when disaster strikes.

“If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?”

Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extra ordinary situations. People suddenly forced a fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Neil Parker. On Sunday, in September 2019, Neil is out on a casual hike through a popular wilderness

area outside Brisbane, where he lives. It's a beautiful day, and he's enjoying working his way up an intricate creek system, but when he tries to navigate around a waterfall, the world crumbles beneath him. Next, comes a brutal fall, and a series of bone crunching collisions as he plummets 20 feet into deep water.

By the time he resurfaces, the damage has been done. I say, Neil, there's something really, really bad with your leg. Something is really, really not good with your left foot. Unable to walk, his only option is to crawl. On a map, it might not seem far back to where he started.

But with debilitating injuries, plus tricky terrain, and venomous reptiles blocking his path, this 600-meter crawl will soon turn into a grim, soul-crushing slug. You must have crawled for eight hours. You've got to be close to the junction.

“Why haven't we found the junction if he gone past the junction?”

You're just going to die in here, there's no way you can do this. You've tried and tried, and you don't even seem to be moving on the map. I'm John Hopkins. From the noise-aportcast network, this is real survival stories.

When his apartment in the Brisbane suburbs, Neil Parker is packing a day bag. A 54-year-old runs through his checklist. First aid kit, map and compass, snacks, water bottle, hunting knife. Everything you'll need for this sunny Sunday hike. Today's outing is a casual one.

A quick jaunt along Cabbage Tree Creek, a shallow stream that runs through the Mount Nebo Nature Area just outside the city. It's a straightforward route that Neil has walked many times before, but as any experienced

“Bushwalker knows, proper preparation, even for apparently simple expeditions, is essential.”

By Nature, Neil is careful, detail-oriented and practical. But as he near the end of his checklist, one glaring a mission jumps out at him. A handy piece of gear that, unfortunately, was a casualty of his recent divorce. I would normally carry a PLB, which is a personal location beacon. Some people know about things called e-purgs, e-purgs, or what a ship uses.

They're Russian going location-beekings, but on land they call PLB, it's personal location-beekings.

When we split up, the PLB was the wife, so she kept it, and I always meant to buy another one.

But in the end, Neil never got around to it. Venturing it to the bush without a PLB isn't ideal. But if he gets into trouble, he should still be able to rely on his mobile phone. He'll be tackling this little trek solo. He did invite a couple of friends from his local hiking club, the Brisbane Bushwalkers,

but they both had other plans this weekend.

“And so, Neil has made some appropriate adjustments.”

He won't be going anywhere outside of a mobile range, so as long as his phone doesn't run out of battery, he should be covered on that front. Plus, it's not like he's off exploring the Outback. Mount Nibba is less than 40 kilometers from downtown Brisbane. So, when his friends said they couldn't come with him, he shrugged it off.

I said, "Oh, yeah, no problems, okay." It's only a three-hour walk. I'll avoid all the hard stuff if I go tree-outs on your own, by lunch. He checks the battery on his phone is fully charged, then he slips it into his pocket, shoulders his backpack and grabs his car keys.

There is always nothing quite like this moment.

Stepping through his front door, map and compass in hand, bound for an adventure in the great wide world beyond. Finding escape in nature was something that Neil learned to do as a child, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden corner of Brisbane. It was a very tough upbringing.

He doesn't have to look the wrong way at the shopping center and you get your head punched in. I think it's like that. It just was rough, so you learned to keep your head down and be smart about what you didn't where you went and stuff like that.

But being in conspicuous was never going to be easy for young Neil, tall, thin, and socially awkward. He was an easy target for school bullies. Despite his father working two jobs, money was often scarce, which meant that he and his three sisters had to go without basic necessities.

This too became a reason for other kids to single him out.

"I didn't wear a school uniform, I only had hand me down clothes, I never had new sneakers,

I was a string bean, I was a skinny as a rake, and then because I was shy, I would pick

“on me, and I knew I wouldn't fly back and I'd just get upset, and that's what they”

just do. They just keep picking up me because they knew they could upset me." All told, school was a pretty miserable endurance test. But when the last lesson of the day finished, it was always a place you could go to to find a solid and a sensitive belonging, a place where no school uniforms required.

Being outdoors for me has always been the place that's reached out to my batteries and made me feel alive. Being the only born a family, if I'm a dad never used to worry about me, and me and the local kids would get in the buseral game, we'd play in the creek in the bush, and as long as my home by diet, there wasn't a problem.

The freedom to do that and be myself around, friends, outside of school was just great. After finishing school, Neil joined the Royal Australian Navy, enticed by the prospect of overseas travel. But in the end, his stint in the military was short-lived. I only lasted a year and it turned out it wasn't quite for me on two independent, particularly

do well in groups, and say, "I look on a person who likes to ask how high to jump when the shoulder jump, or rather just do my own thing." Neil quit the Navy and returned to Brisbane to find work.

to become a commercial kitchen designer.

“During his time, he got married and had kids, a son and a daughter.”

But while it may have seemed from the outside like everything was going great, the reality wasn't so rosy. Many for the veneer of personal and professional success, he was struggling.

I got divorced from my first wife with my kids.

At my fault, drinking depression was a problem I was dealing with, but it was undiagnosed and it cost me my marriage. In 2012, she re-located back in New Zealand and the kids went with her. So in 2012, I had a massive mental breakdown, and I spent six months where I just drank, cried, slept, and did nothing.

Couldn't get out of bed. I lost everything, I lost my house, lost my job, lost my career, everything. I was $3,000 in debt to a mate and had to start again. Slowly, with the help of a therapist, his mental health improved.

“Contributing towards his recovery was the fact that around this time, he got involved”

with a local hiking club, the Brisbane Bushwalkers. Over the past decade, meals love of outdoor adventure at full and by the wayside, lost in the general melee of life. But around 2012, shortly after his mental health crisis, he'd rediscovered the pursuit that had given him so much joy as a kid.

"It's pretty much what saved my life in 2012, it's what turned my life around, it gave me renewed purpose to live, to have a reason, to be alive, to look forward to the weekend, getting out with a group of like-minded people, having fun, great banter, adventuring, climbing, scrambling. This is absolutely what I want to do, and it really, really did totally change my life

around." It's now seven years since Neil joined the Brisbane Bushwalkers, and that time he's gone from the newest recruit to one of the group's most proficient guides.

“It has become the focal point of his life.”

A few years ago, he met someone or woman from the club and got remarried, and though the relationship didn't last, they split on good terms and both remain active members.

As for his kids, Neil was estranged from them for a long time after his first divorce,

but recently there have been signs of a potential reconciliation. A little over a month ago, his son came out to Brisbane to visit his dad for the first time in years. "He came over and he saw me and we had a lengthy conversation about what we had done long and stuff like that, and so he comes to an agreement that we would work positively

to bring our relationship back together. I was on a high thing in great, wasn't the best of circumstances, but it was a start." As he follows the road towards Mount Mebo, Neil's mood is light, he's full of optimism. Not just for the hiker head, but for the future in general. "The thought of having the opportunity to be a father to my children again, for it's

like excellent.

This is what I've always wanted to be, I was wanted to be a father, and unfortunately

I lost that opportunity, and now I've been and is back on the platter. I don't want to lose that." But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore, but what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore.

But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore.

But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. But what I want to do now is not to be a father to my children anymore. This March, on the Neuser Podcast Network, a brand new show is launching. Join host Ian Glenn for Real Vikings, a limited release series,

taking you on a deep dive into the Viking world. On short history of, we cross paths with earnest Hemingway and journey back to the European Middle Ages. On real survival stories, we're in sunny Spain, as a lifeguard on his holidays gets drawn into a terrifying near drowning experience.

And remote Myanmar, as a devastating flood over worms and isolated mountain community. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, a woman arrives at Holmes' door bemused by the sudden disappearance of her fiance in a case of identity. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free, on Neuser Plus. And if you haven't already, get your hands on a copy of Neuser's book,

a short history of ancient Rome.

It's about 9 a.m.

“Neal has parked his car at the trailhead,”

and his pickens were along cabbage tree Creek.

The waterway runs down the middle of a deep, rock-filled gorge, tumbling and twisting around stepping stone boulders. After walking for about an hour, he reaches a junction where the creek forks. There's a small clearing to one side, and a gravel track that leads off into the trees. His plan is to warp upstream along one of the forks until he reaches a series of beautiful waterfalls and swimming holes.

From that location, it's uphill, fairly steep, scrambling rocks. We're talking about rocks to size the cars to be climbing over and scrambling over constantly. It's not just a flat walk, it's all forks, hands on everything, climbing over everything. Neal navigates the boulders with dexterity.

And at about 9.30, he reaches the first of the series of waterfalls.

“He pauses on a boulder and looks up at the obstacle.”

A sheer rock face, saw as 100 feet above his head, split down the middle by a plume of cascading water. It's not vertical all the way to the top. At 20 feet, the rock faced flattens, making it possible to scramble up without ropes. In the past, Neal has led walking expeditions around this very fall. It's a good place to take less experienced walkers because of the range of difficulty grades it presents.

I would lead walkers around a right hand face above the deep water, to feel if they would like doing an overhang climb around and into the main part of the waterfall and up. For those who didn't fancy the tricky overhang climb, he would suggest the so-called chicken track, a footpath that leads around the side of the falls up to the point at which the rock face flattens out. Ordinarily, he'd challenge himself with a harder climb.

But on this day, no, Neal, that's the high grade walk. You'd open yourself at risk today, go around the back, do the chicken track and come out with at least out to the top. So I did that, went around the back, came up to the flat rock at the top, and I've just got the flat wall face from front of me. I was not a bit of a knife-edge of a rock, but it was almost flat.

It'd be less than 5 degree angle of slope. He pauses on the ledge, next to him the waterfall crashes into the deep pool below. The rock beneath his feet is covered in a fine coating of brownish red algae, thoroughly dried out by the sun.

During the rainy season, Neal would never attempt this walk.

The slippery weeds would make it far too dangerous. But now, the algae adds traction beneath his trail shoes. Or at least, it's supposed to. For months, this part of Australia has been experiencing higher than normal temperatures and lower than normal rainfall. The result is that the algae has dried out to an extent that Neal hasn't experienced before.

Rather than providing grip, the dehydrated plants turn to dust beneath his feet, transforming this beginner level walk into a deadly booby trap. So, just when he pauses to adjust his footing, Neal slips. Look down, I saw my left foot sliding. I looked up to find something to grab, and there was nothing.

I looked again on my right foot slipped, and I just noticed this white powder coming out from under my feet. The algae has crumbled to a fine white dust beneath his shoes. As he skits backwards, arms, flailing, Neal glances over his left shoulder towards the drop he's sliding towards. Rocky ledges, jutting boulders, and a pool of icy water all await below. This is going to hurt.

And I just thought, this is going to be bad deal. You are going to be seriously injured when you land.

“If you're alive when you hit the bottom, you need to start swimming.”

It's going to be cold, you're going to go into shock. You've got to do what you've got to do, so you hit that water. It's about 9.40 a.m., southeast Queensland Australia. In the dense lush rainforest around Mount Nibbo, on a rocky ledge, partway up a hundred foot waterfall.

Neal Parker has lost his footing. The experience push walker slides backwards.

Frontically reaching for handholds in the rock wall to his right.

“Twenty feet below, the waterfall crashes thunderously onto a solid stone ledge”

before spilling out into a deep dark lunge pool. As he slides, Neal makes one final futile lunge for a handhold. But it's no good. And with that, he topples backwards over the edge, pinballing between the rocks on his way down.

And I'm going down, I got by, fresh, splash into the water. He plummets into the deep pool of water, cold rushing through his body. Seconds later, his head resurfaces as he gasped some thrashes about. It takes a moment or two to come to his senses. But when he does, there's a strange, sickening sensation in his lower leg.

I actually deal with something really, really bad with your leg.

Something is really, really not good with your left foot. He's swimming, he's swimming, get out of the water, you don't want to go into shock. I only had about 20-30 feet to swim after a rocky show.

“And I pull myself up for just a rocky show, and I look there's a lot of alive.”

Neal lies on his back on the rocks, his chest heaving. A dull, throb radiates from his left ankle. Winsing, he holds himself up into a sitting position. And looks down to assess the damage. OK, what's wrong with your leg?

I lifted my leg up out of the water, and my foot fell off the end of my leg. Just dripped off the end of my leg. He stares, wide-eyed.

His left ankle has snapped so severely, but his foot hangs limp, moving in a way it shouldn't,

as though held in place by a loose hinge. Working quickly, using what he has, he fashions a splint out of his walking pole, and some snake-back bandages. Thus he wraps his leg in elastic gauze. He feels a sudden sharp pain in his left wrist.

His left hand is swollen and bruised. He'll have to keep an eye on that, too.

“Once he's all strapped up, Neal turns his focus towards rescue.”

I'll still go off feeling him, my fingers. OK, can't be too bad. OK, called for help. Bring my pack around, get my dry sack out with my phone in it. No range.

I'm in a rock forge of Surandonals, three sides. By this rocking closure, I can't get range. With a trembling hand, he holds up his phone, trying to pick up a bar of signal. No luck. A grim truth settles on him.

To reach an area where he can get some signal to phone the emergency services, he's going to have to get out of this gorge. Or at least reach a place where it's walls are lower and less obstructive. Neal grimaces. He goes to put his phone back in his pocket.

But he must be shaking more than he realizes. Because as he lowers his hand to his trouser pocket, he feels his phone suddenly slipped from his fingers and falls with a muffled splash into the creek. Neal dives forward, plunging his arm into the water.

He manages to catch the device before it sinks out of reach. He pulls it from the weeds and frantically dries it off. The screen has turned an ominous black. He holds his thumb down on the power button. Nothing.

He tries again, but still, no dice. And so, I now knew how serious this event was. Nobody knows where I am. I haven't told anybody I've gone out walking. I've had a serious accident.

And now I've lost by any means of communications. Now it's like, this is no longer a bad day in the air. This is now life from death. Neal takes a minute to weigh up his options. With no means of communication, he is stuck.

And because he didn't tell anyone exactly where he was going or at what time, there was little chance of anyone coming to look for him anytime soon. His only hope now it seems is to get himself to an area where he will be visible from the sky. I knew then that if I didn't do something, I'd just be found here as a sack of bones, by somebody in the future.

I've been rescued was to get back to the clearing

“where a helicopter, if they did come searching for me, could possibly see me.”

So that's my plan. Got to get back to that clearing. He was at the clearing this morning. It can't be more than half a mile downstream. A distance he covered in 40 minutes with a luxury of no broken bones.

But traversing the rough rocky terrain in his current condition, with a shattered ankle and a likely fractured wrist could take hours. Gritting his teeth, Neal tries to push himself upright, but as soon as he puts the slightest weight on his left side, excruciating pain.

Walking is out of the question. And it's sort, I'm just going to have to crawl. And I'm just going to do what I can. I was on my bum.

I would lean on my left elbow.

I would hold my left leg up with my muscles. And I would just pull my self along the rocks.

“Neal drags himself backwards across the boulders,”

keeping his injured left leg elevated off the ground. It's painfully slow going. Some of the boulders are the size of cars, huge blocks of dark sandstone blocking his path. I had to back out, shuffle over to another location.

Look over. Yep, this is doable. I can do this. And lower myself as carefully as possible, without trying to hit my injured limbs. I'd lean onto my right hand side and slide down a rock

and just head for the best one to hit the bottom. Occasionally,

when his left leg accidentally clips a rock,

he braces for the inevitable surge of agony. But oddly, it doesn't come. The pain he feels has a muted quality. As if his body intent on reaching the clearing has shut down its own receptors,

“filtering out anything that might slow his progress.”

Whatever the science is, thankful for this small mercy. We've no phone to tell the time Neal looks up at the sky. The sun has barely reached its zenith, which means he's only been going for about three hours. It feels like he's been crawling on day.

I thought I needed a rest. I just got to take a break. So I found a flat-ish and I spotted I could lay back and close my eyes. I was taking the rest and been about 15 minutes.

I started hearing a rustling sound. I think there's a snake. His eyes snap open. Venomus snakes. This part of Australia is right for them.

From deadly common browns to the fearsome coastal type-on, tiger snakes and death-adders. Any bushwalk knows to be on their guard for a sudden running with one of these creatures. Neal has grown up around snakes.

By and large, they're only aggressive if provoked. This one is probably just curious. Yeah, no worries. Don't worry about it. Close my eyes. I'll go back to sleep. And then the rustling started getting closer and closer.

I thought, "Yeah, okay. I'm going to deal with this." So I opened my eyes. It wasn't a snake. It was a two-meter go-an-up. Suddenly, prowling towards him is a go-an-up on monitor lizard.

A large carnivorous reptile known for their long claws, sharp teeth, and voracious appetites. At six and a half feet, this one is a fully grown adult. And Neal doesn't like the way it's looking at him. Dye will eat, chariton, ellite, rotten meat,

and they'll take a chunk out of anything. Their bites will fill me in far more danger of death than the injuries I've sustained already because the bacteria in their mouth is designed to break down meat when they eat it. So I'm thinking, "Well, this is a problem."

The lizard slopes from the underground. About ten feet from where Neal is laying. Like a snake, go-anners smell with their tongues. It's how they detect carrion and wounded prey. Neal glances down at his splendid ankle,

where a dark spot of blood has started to seep through the bandage. He looks back at the Guana. Its tongue flickering as it creeps from the bush. He keeps eye contact with the giant creature. And for a time, everything stands still.

Once he realized I had an eye on him and watched him, he's flicking his tongue and watching me and flicking his tongue. He walked about three meters to my left hand side, went up and over a rock face and disappeared.

Fending off a hungry guana is the last thing he needs right now.

“And not one is to hang around for the reptile to come sniffing again.”

He pushes himself onto his elbows and resumes his punishing slog. The hours grind on as Neal pushes, pulls, and heaves his way along the creek. Eventually, the light turns gold and the shadows begin to lengthen around him. He's been going all day. It's hard to say exactly how far he's traveled,

but there is still no sign of the clearing. Surely he can't be far. Still, he's utterly exhausted. He finds a flat section of rock and tugs his bag off his back. He pulls out his sleeping bag, brought in case of emergencies, and wraps himself up in it.

The temperature is dropping fast, and sleeping on this cold rock isn't going to do any favors. He pulls on a few extra layers and hunkers down. Before closing his eyes, he tosses back a couple of painkillers, swallowing the bitter pills with a swig from his water bottle.

And I just lay there, and I close my eyes, and the moon would be at 10 o'clock next time I wake up,

the moon would be at 12 o'clock, next time it would be 4 o'clock. It wasn't really sleeping, but I was lapsing in and out of restful sleep, I guess. It's dawn the next day. Cold and stiff from his restless night, Neil crawls out of his sleeping bag and turns to face the jungle.

His bruised body aches all over. Beneath the bloodstained bandage, his ankle frogs with a dull assistant plane. During the long empty hours of the night, Neil anxieties began to creep in.

“What if he sustained internal injuries in the fall?”

What if his fractured leg becomes infected? All these scenarios swirl around him as he shelders his pack, and sets off crawling once more. All morning, Neil drags himself across the boulders. His broken bones, shifting and scraping.

He must be near in the junction where the stream forks.

The clearing lies right alongside it.

But when he pulls out his map and tries to take a compass bearing, something seems off. If his orientarian skills are to be trusted, it appears he's only travelled a measly 300 meters. Not even a fifth of a mile.

This can't be right. Today the mind games start playing. It's day two. It crawled all day yesterday. You must've crawled eight hours.

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You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction. You've got to be close to the junction.

“You've got to be looking out underneath.”

It's hard, since.

The helicopter has managed to saw so perfectly over kneel

“that he will have remained in the aircraft's blind spot.”

Directly underneath the fuselage. He listens, helpless, the sound of the rotors moving further away. But then. The helicopter did a circle around.

And they came in from my right hand side. And they stopped directly above me. And the helicopter began to maneuver backwards and horror. And, yeah, it was just like a family. We've got to be rescued.

And so, great joy and relief of knowing that I've been found. Neal squints up at the sky.

The helicopter hovers its powerful down drafts

agitating the forest canopy. The door slides open, and two crew members are winched down to various city. It's really hard to explain it to somebody if you haven't had a near death experience

to understand that you are actually going to survive this. That release of Endorphins I was ecstaticly happy. And the paramedics hit me. Why he's smiling?

“I said, because I'm talking to you, I should be dead.”

And that was it. I was just so happy to be a lot. Neal is strapped into a harness and winched up into the helicopter. Only 20 minutes later

is being wheeled through hospital corridors, blinking up at the faces of the medical staff. Bizarre, they all seem to know exactly who he is. The risk for straining the helicopter, strained into E.R.

A people in E.R. are always saying,

"Oh, you're that guy! We heard the best girl in the news! We're so amazed that we're going to get to look after you today. I'm like, I just landed here. You know, but they weren't in no.

They heard E.R. in the story. I'm like, wow, this is incredible. You know, people in E.R. are already full bottle on what I've gone for. You know, my story.

“So, yeah, the news are travelled so far out.”

A convoluted sequence of events has led to his rescue. It was his bus who first raised concerns when Neal didn't report for work on Monday. The bus contacted Neal's sisters,

whom Alam bells began to ring immediately.

With their brothers history of mental health struggles, they feared for his well-being. They contacted the Brisbane Bushwalkers, who were able to figure out that Neal had gone missing while hiking up Cabbage Tree Creek.

That was where the emergency rescue team focused their search. And where they eventually found him, badly injured, but alive. After arriving at the E.R. Neal is whisked into a ward where Medix check his vitals and stick ivy drips into his arms. They stableised me and they said,

"Okay, you know, stable enough now that we can bring your family in. I brought my sisters in and I was, I quite a theory reunion with my sisters because, you know, they thought I'd made a promise to decide and suddenly now they're seeing me.

So it was a very joyful reunion with my sisters." Soon, however, it's time to address his injuries. As well as chattering both his ankle and his wrist, further x-rays reveal that Neal has also crushed 20 vertebrae. It will take several complex operations to realign his broken bones

and men the damage to his spine. He is dosed up on strong pain relief than wield into the operating theatre where a team of specialist orthopedic surgeons carefully piece him back together.

After his operations, Neal must remain bedbound as his bones heal. Complications arise as his body struggles to cope with the trauma that has been inflicted upon it. The pain he managed to suppress in the bush surges back with the vengeance in the hospital

as he endured as weak after weak of intensive treatment and exhausting rehab. There was a challenge every day but I was keen to do it and just run together and hospital bed down there.

Hospital room because I've been here for years looking at the ceiling, the TV, I just had a lot of fun to get out of that room and not the kind of person that likes to sit and wait. Eventually Neal is allowed to go home. It takes several months to return to full health

but as soon as he's ready, he's back out doing what he loves, bush-waking trails and climbing mountains. But just as he's beginning to feel like himself again, something unexpected forces him back indoors. Only a couple of months after leaving the hospital,

the COVID-19 pandemic hits and the resulting lockdowns

The sudden isolation of quarantine is strange and unsettling

but he manages to make peace with it.

“As he did during his accident and subsequent rehab,”

he finds a path through this challenge too. I just hope, well, it's happened. You just gotta deal with him.

Keep positive. Just keep moving on.

Just don't worry about things you can't affect. And so I just learned to stop worrying about little things to start looking at the bigger picture. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. So just enjoy life.

Just enjoy what you're doing.

“Don't worry about what might happen next year when they decide”

to get a close and national park or you know, they're going to change a road system or the companies that you're working for. You know, it emerges. You get all of that. That might happen.

Leave it in the moment and appreciate what you're doing now. You can choose to be happy.

“Or you can choose to dwell on negativity.”

I've been a victim, but I don't choose to be. I choose to be a survivor. Next time, we meet professor, mountaineer, and environmental scientist John Orn. In the spring of 2014, the 44-year-old is leading a research trip in a remote corner of the Himalayas.

Until one morning, when John experiences first hand,

the dangers of doing scientific research on the roof of the world. A hidden danger in a snow thrusts him into a seemingly insurmountable scenario. Tumbling into a freezing cold chasm that sinks into the very bowels of the mountain, it seems there's only one question. Will John die quick death or a slow one?

Trapped, critically injured, and surrounded by icy darkness, his only hope is an audacious, elaborate, and incredibly dangerous self-rescue. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting and without ads by joining Noiser Plaster Day. Just click the banner at the top of the feed to get started.