Real Survival Stories - Bushwalker Wounded: Neil in a Haystack

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Neil Parker sets out on a casual hike just outside of Brisbane. It’s a beautiful day, and he’s enjoying working his way through the forested slopes, past the wild orchids and hibiscus flowers, the cockatoos and the koalas. But when he tries to navigate around a waterfall, the world crumbles beneath him. After a bone-crunching fall, Neil will have no option other than to attempt to crawl to safety. With debilitating injuries, plus tricky terrain and venomous reptiles blocking his path, it will turn into an epic slog… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome aboard Via Rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via Rail, love the way.

Sunday, September 15th, 2019. It's early spring in Southeast Queensland, Australia, and the forested slopes around Mount Nebo flourish with new life. Wild orchids and hibiscus flowers sprout through the undergrowth, dazzling brushstrokes of pink and yellow against the rich green canvas. High in the canopy, cockatoos and koalas lounge among the branches of the gum trees, which sway softly in the warm breeze. Meandering through the heart of the forest, a creek tumbles downhill over a staircase of large moss-dapled boulders. Periodically, the water plunges over spectacular drops, collecting in dark circular pools, fringed by giant ferns.

Making his way upstream, navigating the jumble of boulders with practiced agility, his 54-year-old bushwalker Neil Parker. He scrambles on all force, pulling himself past one obstacle before hopping onto the next. His movements are smooth, fluid. He is comfortable on this tree. terrain. Neil reaches a tall rock face, bisected down the middle by ribbon of cascading white water. You walk into this beautiful circular palms 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. 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 point 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 and I'm just looking about where I'm heading off to next.

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 handholds, no way to stop what is happening. The dried algae coating the rock is crumbling beneath his boots, forming a treacherous, slippery surface that is leading him inexorably towards a sheer 20-foot drop. I looked straight away down that curved rock face that I knew I was headed for. And I looked down there and I just thought, this is going to be bad, Neil. You are going to be seriously injured when you land.

Ever wondered what you 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 extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. for their lives. In this episode we meet Neil Parker. One 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, Bill, 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 slog. You must have crawled for eight hours. You've got to be close to the junction. Why haven't we found the junction? You've gone past the junction. You're just going to die out 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 Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's September the 15th, 2019. In his apartment in the Brisbane suburbs, Neil Parker is packing a daybag. The 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 nears the end of his checklist, one glaring omission 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 Eperbs. E-perms are what a ship uses. They're rushing-going location beakings, but on Lambda, they're called PLB, it's personal location beacon. But when we split up, the PLB was the wife, so she kept it, and I was meant to buy another one. But in the end, Neil never got around to it. Venturing into 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 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 Nebo is less than 40 kilometres from downtown Brisbane So when his friends said they couldn't come with him He shrugged it off I said oh yeah no problem it's okay And I thought it's only a three-hour walk I'll avoid all the hard stuff Off I go Three hours, I'll be home 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. You'd only have to look the wrong way at the shopping centre and you get your head punched in

and things 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 inconspicuous 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. never had new sneakers. I was a string bean. I was as skinny as a rake. And then because I was shy, they would pick on me, and I knew I wouldn't fight back and I'd just get upset. And that's what they just do. They just keep picking at 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 solace and a sense of belonging. a place where no school uniform was required.

Being outdoors for me has always been a place that's re-chafed my batteries and made me feel alive. Being the only boy and a family, bum and dad never used to worry about me and me and the local kids, we'd go down in the bush all day and we'd play in the creek in the bush. And as long as my home by dark, you know, that wasn't a problem. The freedom to do that and being myself around friends outside of school was just great. After finishing school, Neil joined the Royal Australian National.

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 in the Navy. It turned out it wasn't quite for me. I'm too independent, but don't particularly do well in groups, and say, I'm what kind of person who likes to ask how high to jump when the child to jump? I'd rather just do my own thing. Neil quit the Navy and returned to Brisbane to find work.

He started selling kitchen equipment on shop floors. worked his way up the ladder to become a commercial kitchen designer. During this 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. Beneath the veneer of personal and professional success, he was struggling. I got divorced from my first wife with my kids. I had my fault.

Drink and depression was a problem I was dealing with. But it was undiagnosed and it cost me my marriage. In 2012, she relocated back to 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 the local hiking club the Brisbane Bushwalkers over the past decade Neil's love of outdoor adventure had fallen by the wayside lost in the general melee of life but around 2012 shortly after his mental health crisis he rediscovered the pursuit that had given him so much joy as a kid it's pretty much That's 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 changed my life around. It's now seven years since Neil joined the Brisbane Bushwalkers. In 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, a woman from the club, and got remarried. And though the relationship didn't last, they split on good terms and both remained 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, you know, we had a lengthy conversation about what we had done wrong and stuff like that. And so we'd come to an agreement that, you know, we would work positively to bring our relationship back together. I was on a high thinking, great. It wasn't the best of circumstances, but at the start. As he follows the road towards Mount Nebo, Neil's mood is light. He's full of optimism.

Not just for the hike ahead, but for the future in general. The thought of having the opportunity to be a father to my children again, it's like, excellent, this is what I've always wanted to be. I always wanted to be a father, and unfortunately I lost that opportunity. And now I've been handed back on the platter. I don't want to lose that. When McDonald's partnered with Franks Redhot, they said they could put that shit on everything. So that's exactly what McDonald's did.

They put it on your McChrispy. They put it in your hot honey McNuggets dip. They even put it in the creamy garlic sauce on your McMuffin. The McDonald's Franks Red Hot menu. They put that shit on everything. Breakfast available until 11 a.m. At participating Canadian restaurants for a limited time. Franks Red Hot is a registered trademark of the French's Food Company LLC.

Did you know that Staples Professional can tailor a custom program to make running your business easy? With a Staples Professional account, you get one vendor, one delivery, and one invoice for all your must-haves. From tech to cleaning supplies and dedicated support from Staples experts who guide you on everything, from product selection and ordering to payment. Join today at staplesprofessional.ca and get expert solutions tailored to your business. That was easy. It's about 9 a.m. Neil has parked his car at the trailhead and his picking's way 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 walk upstream along one of the forks until he reaches a small clearing to one. series of beautiful waterfalls and swimming holes. From that location, it's uphill, fairly steep, scrambling rocks. We're talking about rocks the size of cars to be climbing over and scrambling over

constantly. It's not just a flat walk. It's all fours, hands-on, everything, climbing over everything. Neil 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 soars 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 face flattens, making it possible to scramble up without ropes. In the past, Neil has led walking expeditions around this very fall. It's a good place to take less experience. because of the range of difficulty grades it presents. I would lead walkers around a right-hand face above the deep water to see 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, Neil, that's the high-grade walk. You're not putting yourself at risk today. Go around the back, do the chicken track, and come out where that leads 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 in front of me. I was not a bit of a knife edge of a rock, but it was almost flat.

It would be less than five-degree angle of slope. 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-red algae, thoroughly dried out by the sun. During the rainy season, Neil 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 Neil 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, Neil slips. I saw my left foot sliding. I looked up, the fine sight to grab and there was nothing. I looked back down and 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 skids backwards, arms flailing, Neil 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, Neil. 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've got to go into shock. You've got to do what you've got to do as soon as you hit that water.

It's about 9.40 a.m., southeast Queensland, Australia. In the dense, lush rainforest around Mount Nebo, on a rocky ledge partway up a hundred-foot waterfall, Neil Parker has lost his footing. The experienced bushwalker slides backwards, knees bent, arms grasping at thin air, frantically 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 plunge pool. As he slides, Neil 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 and I go bang! Crash! Splash into the water. He plummets into the deep pool of water, cold rushing through his body. Seconds later, his head resurfaces as he gasps and thrashes about. It takes a moment or two to come to his senses. But when he does, there is a strange, sickening sensation in his lower leg.

I see, Neil, there's something really, really bad with your leg. Something is really, really not good with your left foot. Keep swimming, keep swimming, get out of the water. You don't want to go into shock. I only had about 20, 30 feet to swim up to a rocky shoal. I pulled myself up onto the rocky shoal and I looked and I thought, I'm alive. Neil lies on his back on the rocks, his chest heaving. A dull throb radiates from his left ankle.

Wincing, he hauls himself up into a sitting position and looks down to assess the damage. Okay, what's wrong in your leg? I lifted my leg up out of the water and my foot fell off the end of my leg, just drooped off the end of my leg. He stares, wide-eyed. His left ankle has snapped so severely that 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 snakebite bandages. As 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, Neil turns his focus towards rescue. I still got feeling in my fingers. Okay, it can't be too bad. Okay, call for help. Bring my pack around, get my dry sack out with my phone in it. No range.

I'm in a rock gorge. I'm surrounded on three sides by this rock enclosure. 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 its walls are lower and less obstructive. Neil 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 slip from his fingers and fall with a muffled splash into the creek. Neil 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, Neil. This is now life and death. Everyone needs help with something. If investing is your something, we get it. Cooperator's financial representatives are here to help.

genuine advice that puts your needs first. We got you. For all your holistic investment and life insurance advice needs, talk to us today. Co-operators, investing in your future together. Mutual funds are offered through Cooperators Financial Investment Services Inc. to Canadian residents except those in Quebec in the territories. Segregated funds are administered by Cooperators' life insurance company. Life insurance is underwritten by cooperators' life insurance company. Stuck in that winter slump, try dove men plus care aluminum-free deodorant. All it takes This is a small change to your routine to lift your mood. And it can be as simple as starting your day with the mood-boosting sense of Dove Men Plus

care aluminum-free deodorant. It'll keep you feeling fresh for up to 72 hours. And when you smell good, you feel good. Visit Dove.com to learn more. Neil 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 is 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 or somebody in the future. I knew that the only way I could increase my chances of being 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 clear. 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 the 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, Neil 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. I just thought, I'm just going to crawl. I was 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 myself along the rocks. Neil 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 this path. They have 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. So I'd lean onto my right-hand side and slide down a rock and just hope for the best when they 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, he is thankful for this small mercy. With no phone to tell the time, Neil 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 all day. I thought, I need a rest.

I just got to take a break. And so I found a flattish in a spot that I could lay back and close my eyes. I was taking the rest and it's been about 15 minutes, so I started hearing a rustling sound. I think there's a snake. His eyes snap open. Venomous snakes. This part of Australia is rife for them, from deadly common browns to the fearsome coastal Taipan, tiger snakes and death adders. Any bushwalker 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, not worse. Don't worry about it. Close my eyes, I'll go back to sleep. Then the rustling started getting closer and closer, and I thought, yeah, okay, I've got to deal with this. So I opened my eyes, if it wasn't a snake, it was a two-meter goanna. Suddenly, prowling towards him is a goana or 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 one. is a fully grown adult. And Neil doesn't like the way it's looking at him. They will eat keratin. They'll eat rotten meat and they'll take a chunk out of anything. Their bites will put 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, yeah, this is a problem. The lizard slopes from the undergrowth, about 10 feet from where Neil is lying. Like a snake, goannas smell with their tongues. It's how they detect carrion and wounded prey. Neil glances down at his splinted 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.

he realized I had an eye on him and watched him. You know, 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. Big sigh of relief. Fending off a hungry goanna is the last thing he needs right now. And not wanting 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 Neil pushes, pulls and heaved his way along the creek. Eventually, the light turns golden, and the shadows begin to lengthen around him. He's been going all day. It's hard to say exactly how far he's travelled, 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 tugging. his bag off his back. He pulls out his sleeping back, 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 him any favours. 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 sweep from his water bottle. And I just lay there and I would 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'd be 4 o'clock. And so I 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 blood-stained bandage, his ankle throbs with a dull, persistent pain. During the long empty hours of the night, new anxieties began to creep in. What if he sustained internal injuries in the fore? What if his fractured leg becomes infected?

All these scenarios swirl around him as he shoulders his pack and sets off crawling once more. All morning, Neil drags himself across the bone. his broken bones shifting and scraping. He must be nearing 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 orientering skills are to be trusted,

it appears he's only traveled a measly 300 meters, not even a fifth of a mile. This can't be right. So now the mind game start playing. It's day two. You crawled all day yesterday. You must have crawled for eight hours. You've got to be close to the junction.

Why haven't we found the junction? Have you gone past the junction? You know? So I'm starting having doubts about where I am. You're just going to die out here. There's no way you can do this. You know, you've tried and tried and you don't even seem to be moving on the map. Emotions are starting to kick in because I'm starting to worry about my family.

And people who don't know where I am, I probably by now started to miss me. You know, it's Monday. You know, surely someone's missed me by now. Above all this is children. After years of estrangement, Neil has finally started to make some inroads into repairing those relationships.

I just started thinking, there's no way I want them to think that I've gone and abandoned them again or I've abandoned the idea of reconnecting with them. And I thought, I've got to get out of here. With a renewed determination, Neil checks the map. If he is where he thinks he is, it can't be more than 400 meters to the junction.

Quarter of a mile tops. He just needs to get his head down and press on. Off he goes, squirming over boulder after boulder. His shoulders and biceps burn with the effort of dragging his own weight for more than 12 hours, but he doesn't let up. He falls into a rhythm. Sweat pouring off his brow, shunting and wriggling across the rocks. At one point, his ears prick up.

A muffled sound echoes off the walls of the gorge. Human voices drifting through the trees. I start hearing voices, because the fire trail follows the creek system, but a good 400 metres away. I could hear voices, I thought, people are walking down the fire trail. I start screaming atop atop my lungs. Help! Help! I'm seriously injured! I need help!

Neil bellows until his voice is hoarse. His cries reverberate into the wilderness. He waits, not daring to breathe, straining his ears for a reply. And then he gets one. It turned out to be wampo pigeons, and the wampo makes a noise, whoopoo, wopoo!

With it echoing through the forest, it just sounded like, muffled conversation of people. So I was dreaming that I was hearing people or hopeful that what I was hearing were people, but it was just a local pigeon. Sick, with disappointment, it carries on. Another couple of hours dragged by

and still there's no sign of the junction. All sorts of things are doubting in my minds, where am I out, what am I doing? Still arguing with myself looking at the map, no, I'm still going southeast. The compass says I'm still southeast. Why haven't I found this junction? I've still in the same square I've been in for two days.

So one kilometre square can't be right. Neil studies the map again. The grids and contour lines swim before his eyes, blurring together into meaningless symbols. He stops the map angrily back into his pocket. On he goes. Soon enough, the sun's slanting rays tell him it's late afternoon. His second day is almost up.

Neil lifts his head to check his whereabouts. And at last, there it is. The fork in the creek. I thought, wow. I've actually finally made it to the junction. I'm here. I've got a chance of survival now. I've got a chance of somebody finding me.

It has taken him two days to crawl a distance of 600 meters. but he has made it. Once again, Neil finds a flat section of rock and curls up in his sleeping bag. Gradually, the honeyed evening light turns a dusky blue. And then, shortly after nightfall, he hears it. Not long after the moon came up, I heard helicopter, someone already knows what's happened.

They're going to find me. I'm a needle in a haystack. if they're using thermal imaging. I'm a needle in a haystack out here because they don't know where to start looking for me or where I am exactly. But it gave me hope to think, okay, somebody's already worked it out.

Help is on its way. My mood and my spirits are elevated instantly to, I'm going to get rescued tomorrow. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate

truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. It's Tuesday morning. At first light, Neil looks around the creek in anticipation.

Surely today's the day that this nightmare will end. By now, his absence must have been noted by someone. He heard a helicopter last night, combing the area. That feels like proof that people are out looking for him. But as the sun continues to climb, his confidence starts to wane. No people, no helicopter. I start thinking, well, when a mountain range, there's a ridge road that goes along the whole ridge for about 30 kilometres.

And it's unfortunately notorious for boy races racing at night, and the police monitor it by helicopter. So now my thoughts are, okay, the helicopter wasn't that for me. What if his assumptions are wrong? What if help isn't on the way? Despondent, Neil drags himself up the bank and into the clearing where he situates himself against the trunk of a stunted spindly tree. And I crawled over to that and I just laid out in the sun,

and I stretched out my sole emergency sleeping bag. It's two metres by one metre, bright orange, on a greeny grass background. And I laid out in the sun and thought, I'm just going to have to sit here and wait. In the end, he doesn't have to wait long. I hear the helicopter again, but now the helicopter is behind me, but in a more rhythmic movement coming towards me. And I'm like getting real excited now because I'm thinking, okay, they're in a real slow search mode pattern.

I've got a chance here. And the helicopter flew directly over the top of it. And if you've ever been in the helicopter and been involved in rescue, when you're in the helicopter you're looking out to the sides, you're not necessarily looking out underneath. His heart sinks. He can't believe his bad luck. The helicopter has managed to saw

so perfectly over Neal that he will have remained in the aircraft's blind spot directly underneath the fuselage. He listens, helpless, to the sound of the rotors moving further away. But then... The helicopter did a circle round and they came in from my right-hand side

and they stopped directly above me and the helicopter began to manoeuvre backwards and hoar and head And it was just like they found me. I'm going to be rescued. And so great joy and relief of knowing that I've been found. Neil 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 where he is city. It's really hard to explain it to somebody is you haven't had a near-death experience. to understand that you are actually going to survive this. That release of endorphins, I was ecstatically happy. And the paramedic said to me, why are you smiling? I said, because I'm talking to you. I should be dead. And that was it.

I was just so happy to be alive. Neil is strapped into a harness and winched up into the helicopter. Only 20 minutes later, he's being wheeled through hospital corridors blinking up at the faces of the medical staff. Bizarrely, they all seem to know exactly who he is. I reached me straight out of the helicopter, straight into ER. People in the ER are always saying, oh, you're that guy, we heard about you on the news.

We're so amazing. We're going to get to look after you today. I'm like, I just landed here, you know, but they already know. They already know the story. I'm like, wow, this is incredible, you know. People in the air are already full body. on what I've gone from, you know, my story. So, you know, the news had travels so fast.

A convoluted sequence of events has led to his rescue. It was his boss who first raised concerns when Neil didn't report for work on Monday. The boss contacted Neil's sisters, for whom alarm bells began to ring immediately. With their brother's history of mental health struggles, they feared for his well-being. They contacted the Brisbane Bushwalkers,

who were able to figure out that Neil 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 ER, Neil is whisked into a ward where medics check his vitals and stick IV drips into his arms. They stabilised me and they said, okay, you know, stable enough now that we can bring

your family in. I brought my sisters in and it was quite a terrier reunion with my sisters, because, you know, they thought I might have committed suicide 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 shattering both his ankle and his wrist, further x-rays reveal that Neil has also crushed 20 vertebrae.

It will take several complex operations to realign his broken bones and mend the damage to his spine. He is dozed up on top. strong pain relief, then wheeled into the operating theatre where a team of specialist orthopedic surgeons carefully piece him back together. After his operations, Neil 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 endues week after week of intensive treatment and exhausting rehab. It was a challenge every day, but I was keen to do it. I just wanted to go out of that hospital bed down to that hospital room because I've been here. The two, two and a half weeks looking at the ceiling, the TV, I just had enough to want to get out of that room. And I'm not the kind of person that likes to sit and wait. Eventually, Neil 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, bushwhacking 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 leave Neil feeling just as powerless as before. 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 thought, well, it's happened. You just got to deal with them. Keep positive. Just keep moving on. Just don't worry about the things you can't affect. And so I just learned to stop worrying about little things and 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 they're going to close the Nashville Park or, you know, they're going to change a road system or the companies that you're working for, you know, in a merger. Forget all that there. That might happen. Live 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 a victim. I choose to be a survivor. Next time, we meet Professor, Mountaineer and Environmental Scientist John Orr.

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 firsthand the dangers of doing scientific research on the roof of the world. A hidden danger in the 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 a 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 Noisa Plus today. Just click the banner at the top of the feed to get started. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides clear picture of your health today. And may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. A healthier you means more moments to cherish.

Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Now streaming on Paramount Plus. It began on the shores of New Jersey. The calls of gym, tan, laundry, reverberated north to Canada, where a new type of party animal resides. They move as a herd migrating to their favourite watering holes,

asserting dominance by flexing, grinding and twerking. Coupling is quick, steamy, and sometimes in hot tubs. When morning arrives, they do it all over again. Canada Shore. New original series, now streaming on Paramount Plus.