Rescuers had to winch a 500kg rock to free Campbell from a crevice between two boulders. — Photos: NSW Ambulance/Facebook
Many people say they can’t live without their phones. But one Australian woman’s attempt to save hers left her fighting to get back to her life.
This month, Matilda Campbell was with her friends in the Hunter Valley, a wine region about 150 miles north of Sydney, when her phone fell between boulders. She tried to retrieve it but slipped and got stuck between two boulders – eventually finding herself upside down.
Her friends tried to help her but were unsuccessful and tried calling an emergency help line, but had to get in their vehicle and drive to find a signal, she said in a statement. One friend stayed behind and helped keep her calm, though she still had a panic attack.
“At one point I had honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it out and was cursing myself for not telling my family I loved them before I had left and was thinking of every situation that I could have handled better,” she said. “I did start crying as I was thinking these things as I truly believed I was not getting out.”
By the time the paramedics got to Campbell, she had been hanging by her feet for more than an hour.
The rescuers said they had to remove several large boulders to create a safe access point and build a hardwood frame to ensure stability. They then used a Tirfor winch, a traction and lifting device with a continuous wire rope, to move a boulder weighing 500 kilograms (more than 1,100 pounds).
About seven hours after her initial fall, Campbell was safely rescued.
“In my 10 years as a rescue paramedic I had never encountered a job quite like this,” Peter Watts, a New South Wales ambulance specialist rescue paramedic, said in a Facebook post. “It was challenging but incredibly rewarding.”
But not everything could be saved, the rescuers said, noting one important loss: She was unable to retrieve her phone.
Campbell acknowledged the harrowing slip and fall in her own Facebook post, calling herself accident prone. “No more rock exploration for me for a while!” she wrote last week.
The Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s most established wine regions. Famed for its verdant landscapes and plentiful vineyards, visitors flock there around the year for wine tours, fruit-picking and nature hikes.
In a later Facebook post, Campbell shared her gratitude for the friends who called for help and the team that rescued her.
“I’m forever thankful,” she wrote, “as most likely I would not be here today.”
She said in her statement that she spent three days in a hospital with cuts all over one side of her body, a sprained ankle and fractured vertebrae but did not need surgery.
“I also hope this is a good message for people not to put themselves in danger for a phone as I had done,” she said. “No phone is worth the risk of your life.” – ©The New York Times Company
