MY MIRACLE OUTBACK SURVIVAL
After her horse fell on top of her, this country battler faced the fight of her life
Within moments, Babs Moon knew she was in trouble. Big trouble. With a badly broken leg and multiple foot and ankle fractures after her beloved stallion Wiz fell on top of her, the 52-year-old was two kilometres from her remote homestead. She had no phone reception and little to protect her from the elements.
It was midday on July 24, and Babs knew the temperature on her property at Watsons Creek, on the northern tablelands of NSW, could get to minus five after the sun disappeared.
So with her belt around her neck to help lift her badly broken right leg in the air – the only position where she could get any respite from the searing pain – Babs used one arm to hold her limb and the other to drag herself along on her backside.
Each drag only got her 30cm closer to her home and help, before she’d collapse on her back in agony and exhaustion.
“I didn’t really want to say, but I have gravel rash on my behind,’’
Babs says from her wheelchair.
“I was surprised these $10 jeans didn’t even end up with a hole in them!
“I knew I couldn’t rest for too long. I just had to push myself to keep going. I just urged myself, ‘It’s not that far, it’s not that far.’”
For seven hours, German-born Babs continued her private fight for survival. But even as she dragged her way closer to her home came more obstacles – an incline for about 100 metres before she arrived at her fencedoff yard and a painful 40-metre detour after she realised she couldn’t get through the fence.
“Getting into the house and climbing up to get the phone, despite it hurting so much, was my glorious moment,” she says.
The Westpac rescue helicopter was called and Babs was stabilised before being flown to Tamworth Hospital.
“Somebody held my hand all the way to the hospital. That warm hand, it was wonderful,” Babs recalls.
She underwent surgery and will be off her feet for 10 weeks, with more operations to come.
And while Babs doesn’t know when she will be able to ride her beloved Wiz again, she’s incredibly grateful to be alive.
“It was touch and go, I tell you,” she says. “There were times when I thought it was the end.”
‘Climbing up to get the phone... was my glorious moment’