Trapped in the Tropics: Stranger to Saviour

25:50The two men take a beat and try to come up with some other solutions. We started throwing a whole bunch of other stuff at it. He started piling up rocks underneath that corner of the rock I was under and then left space so that we could get a kind of a wedge-shaped stone in there, something that we could bang in with another rock to try and wedge the thing up. But just, yeah, everything we threw at it, nothing was working. As midnight edges closer, the situation becomes more and more hopeless. They've done everything they can and made zero progress. They must change tack.

26:32We can't get me out from under this thing and we can't lift this thing. And so we decided that the only way I was coming out was for Geert to hike out. That he's got to hike out and we've got to organize a rescue. It's a plan laden with risk, but it's the only viable plan they have. Get cannot traipse back through the jungle in the middle of the night. It's too dangerous, so he'll have to wait for first light before setting off. Until then, anything could happen. There's no knowing how badly injured Warren's left leg is. The rock obscures much of his lower half. For all they know, he could be bleeding out.

27:13And if it's not bloodloss that kills him, the continuing torrential downpour could. The steadily filling creek is now around his midriff. For hours, they try in vain to get some rest. Every few minutes, Gert calls out to Warren, checking he's holding on. The night crawls. Wet. Cold. Endless.

27:42Until finally, something changes. The rain begins to ease, then it stops entirely. A small mercy. The threat of drowning has receded. For now at least. Absolutely the longest night of my life. Just waiting for the sun to come up.

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29:07It's Thursday, April the 10th. The first pale light has barely begun to spread across the sky, but Gert is already on the move. He flits around the camp, packing up his gear. Then he carefully selects any belongings Warren might need, placing them in plastic bags, a torch, a first aid kit, some food, a mug, a tarpaulin, a notebook and pen. It's time to say farewell. Get gives Warren a hug. It's a strange, strained goodbye. They've known each other for little more than a day. And yet Warren's life is now in Get's hands. Total stranger to potential saviour in just 24 hours. then he was off and I think that you know hugging him goodbye and watching him head back down the mountain I never felt so alone because I knew I was there for another day it's going to take him a while to get out and by the time anybody gets in yeah I'm here for another day for sure and so really I just settled in to do the only thing that I could do and that was wait

30:20Alone, Warren eats some of the dried fruit Gert left for him. Quickly restless, he grabs some stones and wedges them under the boulder once more. It's almost certainly futile, but at least it keeps him occupied. In fact, it has an energizing effect. Next, he hacks at the boulder with a rock, striking again and again, sweat slicking his skin. Water laps at his waist, creeping under his coat. The cold gnaws at him. The hours slither by. His leg throbs, the pain constant. At the start of this trip, Warren was desperate to get back into nature. Now he cannot escape it. At one point it occurred to me that here I was trapped under this one ton boulder and what had I been doing?

31:21I'd been chasing this feeling of connection. I remember thinking, is this connected enough for you? You know, it was like, is this what you've been looking for? It started to occur to me that I might not make it. In some ways I thought you've had a pretty good life. I was 32 years old. I'd done a lot. I felt like I'd lived a couple of lifetimes. And in another sense, it was like, well, that's it. It's game over. There's all these things that you don't get to do.

31:55That afternoon, after plenty of soul searching, a faint hum breaks through the silence. Quiet at first, but it grows louder. Warren cranes his neck towards the sky. He spots a glint of metal. A plane. Without a second thought, he snatches the tarpaulin and lifts it into the air, waving it frantically. Surely someone will see it. A pilot or a passenger will notice the flash of blue against the green of the jungle. But the plane comes and goes. It shrinks to a dot, then disappears from view completely.

32:42In a cruel torment, numerous aircraft pass overhead during the course of the day. I felt like, you know, aircraft were close enough that if they were looking for me, they might see something, but yeah, it was all to no avail. Seconds stretch out into what feel like hours. The jungle grows black again. Under the pain and pressure of the boulder, Warren is utterly exhausted. His eyes close. Again and again his head droops until he jerks himself awake. Sleeping through this is probably not the best idea because at one point I started to feel like if you go to sleep, you might not wake up. So then it became about trying to keep myself awake.

33:29But again, I just kept drifting off and I was having all kinds of weird hallucinations and I was really starting to lose it. It was really through that night that things started to go downhill. I started to feel really unwell. Told afterwards that it was a lot of just toxins building up in my body from my legs being crushed. I was in really, really bad shape.

34:03It's Friday, April the 11th. Morning breaks over the Australian wilderness, soft light spilling across the stream bed. In his state of flux between sleep and wakefulness, Warren stirs. His body aches, his mouth is dry, and his situation remains unchanged. He has been trapped for around 34 hours. The sun continues to rise, arcing through the vast sky, and there is still no sign of rescue. It's now that Warren turns to his notebook. Eventually I found myself pulling that out and I wrote notes to a few different people that I didn't think I was going to see again. That was a really cathartic, in a way, process to go through.

34:54And probably the best way to describe it is I kind of rode between a feeling of acceptance that I might not make it and then the opposing feeling of pushing back. And it's like, dude, you're hanging in there. You're getting through this. and so I would psych myself up. But I could only really hold that for so long and then I would come crashing down on the other side, no, you're done. You're done, they're going to find you dead here in a couple of days.

35:32Stowing the notebook with his final messages inside the bag, Warren glances down at his right leg. The skin is grey now, mottled with green spots. But it's not the discoloration that catches his eye. A vivid splash of blood pools on the rock beneath him. It's not clear where it's coming from. Then, movement, a flicker near his foot. The shape is instantly recognisable, a freshwater lobster. It seems it's been nibbling on Warren's foot, without him realizing. As it scuttles forward for another bite, Warren grabs a branch and lunges. He misses. Cursing, he shrugs off his shirt, threads it over the end of another stick, and maneuvers it towards his injured foot.

36:27Using the stick as a tool, he drapes the shirt on top of his bleeding extremity and tries to wrap it as best he can. hoping a layer of cotton will be enough to keep the crustacean at bay. But the fact that all this happened without him feeling a thing is more than a little alarming. The way I was trapped, I could actually see down my right leg. I could see my foot. And at one point, I realised that it didn't look very good. And it crossed my mind that I could lose that foot. but I actually, I just pushed that thought out. It's like, dude, don't go there. You've got enough to worry about. And so I did.

37:09I literally just shut it out. Didn't think, didn't give it any more thought. On top of the trauma to his legs, his left hand is now becoming claw-like, the cold causing the fingers to curl into the palm. He can't feel his right hand at all. His eyelids feel too heavy to hold open.

37:38And just when it seems the day will vanish into another hopeless night, perhaps his last, he hears something.

37:49It was pretty late into that second day that I heard, it's still my favourite sound, the sound of a helicopter heading directly towards me. I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see not just a heli, but just any kind of sign of life at all. The helicopter darts like a dragonfly, tail glinting in the shards of dying daylight. It hovers above as Warren thrashes the blue tarp with every ounce of strength he has left. He screams until his throat is raw, his cries lost in the roar of the rotor blades. Then the helicopter's nose tips downward and it veers away, banking towards one of the island's distant summits.

38:38It flew straight over the top and then disappeared. I was like, Christ, I hope they, you know, I really hope they've seen me, but I didn't really know. Time slows back down to a crawl as Warren waits, desperate for any sign that he's been noticed. At last, the sound returns. He's still crushed, trapped, but it's like a great weight has been lifted. It was probably about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes later that I heard it coming back and hovering just down the creek from me and this time I was like, yeah, okay, they've seen me.

39:30It's evening on Friday, April the 11th. A helicopter hovers above a clearing near the summit of Mount Bowen. The blades whirl in a fierce blur, whipping up a swirling dust storm that stings Warren's eyes down on the ground. But he doesn't look away as a figure is lowered from the chopper. Next thing I know is I see this guy walking up towards me And I'm pretty damn happy to see somebody And to have somebody there In an American accent, the man introduces himself as Dr Chip Jaffas Lowering himself to Warren's level, the doc assesses the patient His blood pressure is dangerously low Due to a combination of dehydration and shock Chip inserts a cannula into Warren's arm And within moments, morphine begins to flow through the line As the pain dulls, two more men join, hauling rescue equipment A couple of other guys from the rescue crew Danny Porterfay and Bill Johnson turn up And start to figure out how they're going to get me out After a brief discussion, they settle on a plan

40:50Bill carefully wedges a jack beneath the boulder's right side While Danny slides a crowbar between the ground and the left edge Before they started, Chip had given me a huge shot of adrenaline To get my heart cranking or really pumping So that as the toxins that had built up in my legs get released as the pressure comes off, that that wouldn't just shut my internal organs down. Chip gives his colleagues a nod. Bill starts pumping on the jack, while Danny levers the boulder with a crowbar. The crushing weight eases off Warren's legs immediately. They work slowly, each movement carefully considered.

41:35When the jack has reached its highest position, Bill slides a wooden chock into place to take the boulder's weight. Then he moves the jack to the other side and continues to pump. Warren fades in and out of consciousness, as over the course of two hours, the boulder is raised to around 20 centimeters off the ground. Now comes the riskiest part of the whole operation. One slip, one nudge in the wrong place, could send the boulder tumbling. Carefully, Danny crouches behind Warren, locking his arms around his waist. On the count of three, he drags Warren backwards as gently as he can.

42:25Finally, Warren's legs are clear, and he's secured to a stretcher. Someone speaks into a radio, and moments later, the helicopter roars back into view. Warren is attached to a cable and winched heavenward. The rescue mission is a success. The wilderness recedes behind him, and the relief is incalculable. But he's not out of the woods yet. Chip told me afterwards that he actually thought I was dead. He said, you know, you were grey, and, you know, I was in a bad way.

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44:09It's 8.40 p.m. on Friday, April the 11th. A helicopter touches down at Cairns Base Hospital, nearly 200 kilometers from the scene of the accident. As the rotors come to a stop, Warren is lowered out of the craft on his stretcher. As smoothly as possible, he is wheeled through the doors of the hospital and handed over to the medics.

44:35I had a team of doctors and nurses start to run all kinds of tests on me. And those tests basically consisted of, can you feel this? Can you feel that? You know, they're kind of scratching at my legs, running all kinds of different things down them. And the reality was I wasn't feeling much at all. a guy by the name of Bill Clark comes in, introduces himself as a surgeon. Easily the most softly spoken man I've ever had a conversation with. He says to me, he says, you know, Warren, I think you realise your legs have been badly damaged. And I said, yeah, I do. And he says, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we're going to have to amputate them.

45:17And it was that one word, them, that just ripped something out of my guts. And yeah, cried myself to sleep and woke up the following afternoon into pretty much a whole new world.

45:40After the amputations, Warren spends the next 10 days in intensive care. He undergoes five further operations and is monitored around the clock. Eventually he's stable enough to be moved to another ward It's there, at last, that he's reunited with Gerd And begins to understand the full extent of what his new friend went through to save him Battling over sharp, slippery boulders and through harsh, unforgiving jungle He had a really tough time going down, got really beaten up By the time he got down to the beach and raised the alarm, he had a hell of an ordeal. Him finding out that I'd lost my legs was just a real shock to him.

46:30He went through a really hard time with survivor guilt over the whole experience. Really, it took years, I think, for me to convince him that he saved my life. As the days pass, Warren's body begins the slow process of healing. The accident has left him with life-altering injuries, both legs amputated above the knee and a shattered pelvis. Due to the latter injury, the nurses have to roll him onto his side in order to change his bed. Even this movement is unbearably painful. Above his bed hangs a metal frame, a simple support bar within his reach if he leans forward just enough. At first, he can only grasp it for a second or two, before collapsing backwards, panting and sweating With practice, though, he finds he can hold on for longer and longer Eventually, he's able to lift himself, ever so slightly, from the bed Now, when the sheet's knee changing, he simply pulls himself clear using the bar It's a tiny maneuver, but it feels like a momentous achievement following such significant surgery an achievement Warren is eager to use as a springboard.

47:49I started to think about what the hell does this mean? What kind of life can somebody possibly have with no legs? Because, you know, I was kind of like most people, disability just wasn't part of my world. I didn't know anybody that had any kind of disability at all, really. So it just became a matter of figuring it out. Like, you know, how am I going to do this?

48:17When Warren finally leaves hospital, the challenges of his new reality quickly become apparent. You leave the hospital, you've got curb cuts and stuff, and it's really hard to get around in a wheelchair like that in the beginning. But every time I would overcome something, it would kind of bolster me up. I'd sit up a bit higher, a bit taller, and eventually I got to this point where I actually started looking for obstacles. It was a real turning point.

48:51With this attitude, Warren takes his first steps on prosthetics just ten weeks after losing his legs. And after that, a series of milestones follow. A few months after the accident, he and a friend leave the city for Whipperfield National Park. There, Warren navigates his wheelchair three miles over rugged terrain. In January 1998, he completes the 1.2-kilometre pier-to-pub swim in Lawn, Victoria. But even this is only a warm-up for what comes next. A few weeks later, he sets his sights even higher, on a 1 ,500-metre peak in Tasmania.

49:34Eventually found myself on top of Cradle Mountain, which was really, really emotional. It was almost like I reclaimed this massive part of my life and getting back into, you know, not the wildest place on the planet, but a pretty wild place. And just sitting up on top of that mountain with really close friends, it felt like I was back. It won't be the last summit he reaches. In 2003, Warren makes history, becoming the first double above the knee amputee to scale Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak. The biggest key is resilience for me. And the way I like to put it is resilience is a little bit like a bank account.

50:18So I always recommend that we have a resilience practice. And all that is, is that we get in the habit of doing hard things, that we don't shy away from doing hard things. because every time we do something hard, it's like we make a deposit into our resilience account. And then when you need to draw on it, you've only got what you've got. Warren's tough mindset fortified him during his near-death experience and guided him through his recovery. But he is clear that, first and foremost, he owes Geert a huge debt of gratitude. A man who went from stranger to brother. He did an incredible job under really hard circumstances To get out in one piece and raise the alarm I wouldn't be here otherwise

51:09In the following years, Warren and Geert stay in touch Their relationship now an unbreakable bond Geert, ever the free spirit, is hard to pin down But they do make one important trip together In 2017, on the 20th anniversary of the accident The two men travelled back to the island Along with rescuer Dr Chip Jaffas Then, while up in Queensland Warren manages to track down Bill Clark The surgeon who operated on him It was a pretty interesting experience being back on the island There was a lot to unpack there Bill, you know, he's obviously older now, he's retired and we sit down and we have a meal and we're chatting away.

51:57And at one point he says to me, I have to tell you this, but doing your surgery that night that you came in, that was absolutely the worst night of my career, having to amputate the legs of a 32-year-old man. And, you know, that was kind of a bit of a showstopper. I said, it worked out that what you did saved my life. So, you know, it might have been the worst day of your career, but it was a lifeline for me that led to a pretty incredible life. So it was amazing to get the opportunity to tell him that because it had obviously weighed really heavily on him. It was an amazing meeting that kind of closed the book, if you like, of that whole ordeal.

52:52Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Viral Dalal. In early 2001, Viral, a master's student studying in the US, travels back to India to visit loved ones. It's a welcome break from his studies. But on the morning of January the 26th, this time of joy is interrupted violently and suddenly by a devastating high-magnitude earthquake. Viral will find himself trapped in a coffin-sized air pocket beneath the rubble. As the hours turn into days, he will cling on to perhaps the most powerful motivation there is, the promise of seeing his family again. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

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