‘I think I’m going to die’: teen saved after 80m fall

Young Jake McCollum, who fell on his back with a loud thud, had little faith in his chances of survival after falling 80 meters from a mountain in a national park.

“I remember thinking it was probably over for me,” he said.

The 18-year-old was “pretty shaken up” after falling from Mount Walsh, north of Brisbane, and abruptly ended his first solo bush walk.

He suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs, internal bleeding and a “decent” laceration to his head.

Mr. McCollum crawled over to his backpack, activated his personal identification beacon, and hoped for the best.

The mobile phone he used to take a photo of the view from the top of the mountain a few minutes ago was destroyed.

But half an hour after the mountain fell, Mr. McCollum heard a call from his AirPods to “deliver me.”

By the time he crawled there to grab his Bluetooth headset, he had missed 10 calls.

Fortunately, the phone rang again and Mr. McCollum tapped his AirPods to answer; It was his mother calling.

“I heard a really faint ‘mom, I’m hurt really bad,'” Rachel McCollum said Friday, recalling the incident in November 2025.

“Probably the worst news you could ever hear.

“I don’t know how many times during the phone call he said, ‘I think I’m going to die.'”

His mother stayed on the phone with his father, Tim, relaying messages to authorities searching for their son as they completed the 90-minute drive from their home in Bundaberg to the mountain.

Mr. McCollum was difficult to locate; he had not used the main road and his pointer was “bouncing off the rocks”, confusing the coordinates.

Then the AirPods’ batteries died.

But Mr. McCollum pressed his ears to his damaged phone and could somehow hear his parents’ faint voices as a rescue helicopter approached.

“I remember thinking ‘oh, this is amazing’ when the helicopter came, but then it flew past me,” he said.

“I was talking on the phone and he said (to his parents): ‘He passed me, he passed me!’ I was saying. – went back and forth for a long time.”

Five hours after Mr. McCollum’s fall, LifeFlight aircrew officer Shayne White finally spotted the teenager’s legs in the thick canopy.

It took an hour for the rescue team to stabilize him before he was stretched onto a crane area and taken away by helicopter.

Just two months later, the McCollums had an emotional reunion with the rescue team.

“He’s a very lucky kid with a good outcome,” Mr White said on Friday.

“If his AirPods and phone hadn’t been working, we might not have been able to find him.”