A bushwalk turns to horror for mum and son
IT STARTED AS A SIMPLE WALK ON THE LONG WEEKEND AND TURNED INTO TERROR FOR THIS MUM AND SON
Hopelessly lost, hungry and thirsty, Michelle Pittman thought she was going to die in the bush with her young son.
What began as an enjoyable drive to scope out Mount Royal National Park in the Hunter region of NSW on the October long weekend, turned into a desperate battle for survival.
Michelle, 40, had time off work, so she had taken her nine-year-old boy Dylan for a walk in the great outdoors. The boy had been bullied about his weight and the concerned mum was doing her best to help take his mind off things.
Spotting a camp site, she parked her black 4WD and they wandered off to investigate the area further. A small trail led them over a creek to a fork in the path and up a hill.
But they had made a potentially deadly mistake.
As night began to fall, an awful realisation dawned. They were lost – with no food or water, and a failing mobile phone. But their nightmare was just beginning. The ordeal would last a staggering 10 days as they walked deeper and deeper into the bush, trying to find a way out.
Nobody in the outside world knew where they had gone. They prayed their parked car would eventually give searchers a clue to chase. Throughout it all, Michelle clung to the hope they would survive.
‘We had this beautiful orange and black butterfly with us all the time,’ the single mum tells New Idea.
‘It was always on Dylan’s side. I don’t know... I looked at it like it was a sign we were going the right way and that we would be OK.’
The pair scrambled up hills and down dry creek beds, battling delirium yet somehow continuing on.
At night, Michelle would build rough shelters to keep Dylan warm. During daylight hours, they talked about steak, prawns, and mango and coconut smoothies to keep their spirits up.
There was no fresh water to be found, and on day four, Dylan suggested they drink their own urine to stay alive – like his hero Bear Grylls.
By the eighth day of their ordeal, Michelle realised her little boy could not last much longer. They were both delirious with thirst and hunger, imagining they could hear rescue helicopters and loud music.
‘I woke up and I actually thought Dylan was gone,’ she recalls, with horror. ‘He just had that really pale, purply colour. I had never seen him like that and I screamed. He woke up, but that’s when I realised he didn’t have long.
‘I made a promise to myself that if Dylan didn’t make it out, I wouldn’t either. I felt so guilty, that this was all my fault. How did I put him in this situation? I decided that if he died, I would cut my wrists with a sharp rock so we would die there together, the same.
‘You say your goodbyes in your mind, to the kids and Mum and Dad and your friends, thinking you’re not getting out.’
But amazingly, the butterfly’s promise held true. On the ninth day, they found a substantial track and followed it until they reached rough, unsealed Mount Royal Road, where police searchers spotted them the following day.
‘We came out and the road was there,’ laughs Michelle, who was later told they were given a slim 20 per cent chance of survival at that point. ‘We just stood and looked at each other. “Are we seeing what we think we are seeing?” We both just hugged and cried. I knew we were out. It was over.’
Mother and son were dehydrated, starving, badly scratched and covered with insect bites – but against all odds they were alive.
The ordeal was over, but while recovering in hospital for 11 days, Michelle had another shock in store.
She discovered that the company she worked for – Gromor Enterprises – had made a decision to terminate her employment on the basis of a ‘shortage of work’.
‘Talk about kicking you when you’re down,’ she says indignantly. ‘Apparently, I can apply for any open job once I am better, with a doctor’s certificate to prove I am fit for work. How dare they do that? I think that’s the lowest thing any company could do!’
‘You say your goodbyes in your mind, to the kids and Mum and Dad and your friends’
Michelle needs the money, but for now, back at home in NSW’S Hunter Valley, the battler is focused on getting her son back to school.
‘I can only walk very slowly, but there’s no stopping him. He just bounced back from day one,’ says Michelle, who also has three adult children.
‘But there’s an emotional side of it, too,’ she adds. ‘We hate turning the lights off. We keep the television on so we’re never in the dark. We are both having nightmares, but we are seeing a counsellor. Dylan hates talking about what happened, he just gets upset and cries. So even now, I feel I have to be strong for him.’