Teenager saved after plunging 80 metres in Queensland national park
Laine Clark
Landing on his back with a thud, teenager Jake McCollum gave little thought to his chances of survival after plummeting 80 meters from a mountain in a Queensland national park.
“I remember thinking it was probably over for me,” he said.
The 18-year-old was “pretty shaken” after falling off Mount Walsh, 90 kilometers inland from Maryborough, during his first solo walk through the bush.
He suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs, internal bleeding and a “decent” laceration to his head.
McCollum crawled 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 his fall, McCollum heard a call coming from his “hand-delivered” AirPods.
When he crawled over to get his Bluetooth headset, he missed 10 calls.
Luckily, the phone rang again and McCollum tapped his AirPods to answer. It was his mother.
“I heard a really faint voice saying, ‘Mom, I’m hurt really bad,'” Rachel McCollum said Friday as she recalled the November incident.
“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 remained on the phone while his father Tim relayed messages to authorities searching for their son as they completed the 90-minute drive up the mountain from their home in Bundaberg.
McCollum was difficult to locate; he had not used the main road and his pointer was “bouncing off rocks” and confusing the coordinates.
Then the AirPods’ batteries died.
But McCollum pressed his ears to his damaged phone and could somehow hear his parents’ faint voices as the rescue helicopter approached.
“When the helicopter came, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is amazing,’ but then it flew past me,” he said.
“I was talking on the phone and I said, ‘He passed me, he passed me!’ I was saying. – went back and forth for a long time.”
Five hours after McCollum’s fall, LifeFlight aircrew dispatcher Shayne White finally spotted the teen’s legs in the thick canopy.
It took the rescue team an hour to stabilize him before he was stretched onto a crane area and taken to hospital.
Just two months later, the McCollums had an emotional reunion with the rescue team.
“He’s a very lucky kid with a good outcome,” White said Friday.
“If his AirPods and phone hadn’t been working, we might not have been able to find him.”
AAP
