Not such a good day.

It looks like a beautiful, serene stretch of road along the coast, doesn't it. This morning it was anything but. This is Kelvedon beach, one of my four study sites. This is where I was this morning.

I had just settled in to watch a Hooded plover foraging when I heard the sound of horns blasting, and cars colliding. I ran up the beach to the entrance of the car park and was the 3rd person on the scene of the accident. A Mazda 323 had collided with a large hired campervan. Apparently, the Mazda had been in the carpark and had driven out straight into the path of the oncoming campervan. The family of four in the campervan were on the last day of their holiday from Sydney. They were uninjured but shaken. The 7 year old girl who was a passenger in the Mazda was bruised and distressed and the P-plate female driver was badly injured and trapped in the car. Thankfully, the first person on the scene was an off-duty fireman and he immediately took control and gave first aid to the trapped driver. An older lady and myself spent our time trying to calm and comfort the young girl who turned out to be the driver's niece. More people pulled up to help and soon we had both a nurse and a doctor helping the trapped driver. Eventually, the ambulance, SES, and a firetruck all arrived. Another passerby managed to make contact with the young girl's mother who was working only a few minutes up the road and was quickly at the scene. Eventually, a second ambulance and the police arrived as well.

I was in shock, as were most others at the scene (the site of blood and broken glass does that to people), but I kept it together while I watched the SES use the jaws of life to free the woman and the ambos do their work. Eventually, both the young girl (who needed to be checked for internal injuries and was in quite bad shock) and the driver (who had suffered head injuries from hitting the steering wheel, suspected spinal injuries, and a suspected broken collar bone amongst other things) were taken to hospital a full hour after the crash happened. Once the two ambulances left I went back down onto the beach and fell apart for a while. It took a good half an hour for me to stop shaking. And another hour after that before I felt capable of driving anywhere. But I'm home now, and I couldn't be more relieved. The strange thing is that even now, 7 hours after the accident, as I write this I start to shake again. I always wondered when I was doing first aid courses how I would cope on the scene of a serious accident, now I know.

Here's the news item about the crash. According to this one of the family of four in the campervan was also injured and taken to the Swansea medical centre, probably the young girl (about 7 years old) who also had a seatbelt bruise.