2 December 2002 Sydney

Some pictures of Tom and Lois' visit to Citroën Australia.

The third person with them is Miles Williams, general manager of Citroën Australia, and the car with them is the Citroën C3, making its Australian debut.

Looks like I’ll have to stand in here, as you may know by now that Lois is somewhat incapacitated.

What I have to write, some people might find upsetting. If so, wait till Lois gets back, otherwise this is what happened as far as I can remember.

So we had a lovely breakfast at the Airport Hilton and set out for Ateco Automotive in Tempe for the launch of the new Citroen C3. They made us most welcome and there were lots of the Press there (well after all, that was what it was all about).

Off we set for Canberra and were to visit Peter Donnelly, in Campbelltown on the way. They gave us a warm reception and took some photographs and so we left to move on.

Just as we left to fill up with petrol we heard a bolt fly out of the magneto coupling so we had to return and they fixed us up with a replacement. It is very hard to keep schedules on a journey like this and a few extra hills really uses up time that can’t be made up. Lois and I were cruising down the highway at about 55 kms/hr.

We keep to the hard shoulder mainly and out of the way of the traffic. We were talking about an e-mail I had received the night before. The Austin 7 club of WA had voted unanimously to make me an honorary life member. Lois was laughing about the "life" membership. She said jokingly perhaps they know something we don’t. Well almost prophetic.

BANG!!!!!!!

Such a bloody big bang like a bomb had gone off.

Next thing I remember was rolling over and over and over. I must have gone over a hundred times. It took ages to stop. To start with I didn’t know what had happened but before I stopped I realised it was a car accident. When I stopped I was dazed and covered in blood.

Then I remember looking for Lois. I didn’t even use her name. I was scampering as best as I could like a monkey screaming "where’s my wife, where’s my wife". I found her lying on the drivers’ running board. Her eyes were staring and her breasts were hanging out of her torn clothes. I got to her and she seemed to fade away, her eyes just staring.

I started screaming at her "come back Lois, please come back." There was so much blood and I didn’t have a clue if she’d damaged a vital organ. Then this guy who turned out to be the driver of the car that hit us crying out to God not to let her die.

Of course I had no idea whether or not she had damaged a vital organ. It was the worst moment of my life so far. Without doubt I thought I’d lost her.

I begged her to come back and miraculously she did. I think she must have lapsed into a moment of unconsciousness but her eyes were wide open and staring motionless.

Then she started making awful noises and screaming.

By now others had gathered around. Although she’d not been initially on her back she was now. The road was red hot and she was in agony screaming and begging them to take her off the hot road. Everyone was saying Don’t move her. Poor Lois. It was awful to hear it. Yet it was in a twisted sort of a way better than not. It was the worst conflict imaginable. And she lay there screaming for over half an hour and I was powerless to interfere. People gathered round holding towels to shade us from the heat of the sun. The police and ambulances eventually arrived. I was taken by road and Lois by helicopter to Liverpool Hospital. We were attended to by the emergency teams just 2 beds apart and although I couldn’t see her we could hear one another. Modern medicine is incredible. The paramedics in the ambulance and all they have to handle both in the ambulances and the hospitals is a marvel.

They moved us into the emergency ward and of course we hadn’t seen one another since the accident. They’d cut our clothes off us during transport (our best clothes isn’t that the way). They started to move another bed in next to mine and I said that I thought they were going to let Lois in next to me. It was Lois and I hadn’t recognised her. I just burst into tears when I realised my error. Maybe it was a good outlet, who knows.

Lois was in a worse way than me. As I understand it I’d got my right arm skinned top and bottom. Gash to the head, knee and lost some pieces of teeth. Lois lost about 20% skin off her back, several broken ribs some in more than one place. I only have one broken rib and a bump to my tail bone. And both of us have all our corners knocked off. Well that is as bad as it gets.

There is a photo of the post accident scene in the Illawarra Mercury Article, not for the fainthearted.