By KATH GANNAWAY
THE faded photos that Graham Hetherton carries in his wallet are testament to the impact a road crash can have, even three decades on.
When police, CFA, SES and paramedics talk to young drivers at the TRIP programs that have run in the Yarra Valley over the past few years, they speak of ‘the ripple effect’. It’s about how many people are impacted by a serious injury car crash.
They also show graphic footage of the injuries that can change lives forever.
These programs are aimed at young drivers – and for very good reason – statistically they are the ones most at risk of being injured or killed in a crash, or injuring or killing someone else.
In Graham’s case, the driver was in his forties, and the ripple effect is not just about the immediate impact, it’s about a lifetime.
A random conversation with Graham, and the fact that he’d carried the photos with him all these years, made me think about the legacy of road trauma.
Graham’s life, and his family’s, was changed forever on 7 November, 1980, when a drunk driver slammed into his car at Mount Evelyn.
He had just picked up his wife, Deanna, their three children and a friend’s daughter from a basketball match and they were on their way home.
The photos of the ’69 Falcon show that Graham took the brunt of the crash.
“It was a significant time for Graham because he’d worked on the Board of Works for 26 years and all of a sudden he was deemed unemployable,” Deanna said.
“His life just changed from one side of the leaf to the other.”
Deanna remembers more about the actual crash than anyone. She was in the passenger seat and says the car came towards them, fish-tailing, before losing control.
“It’s something you think back on,” she says recalling an incident a couple of weeks ago when they were on their way home from Yarrawonga and experienced a similar situation.
“He was further away and didn’t hit us, but that sort of thing makes you feel sick … you think about it then,” she said.
Deanna stayed in the car with Graham who was shockingly injured and struggling to breathe.
It took a long time for the ambulance to arrive and the tow truck drivers were getting ready to pull the cars apart when the SES arrived.
The scene was chaos with Graham trapped, children injured, and the passenger in the other car also trapped. The driver of the other car was walking around.
Looking at Graham, the SES volunteers who were first on the scene, moved on to help others who they deemed had a chance.
“They looked at Graham and said ‘I’m sorry, this fellow’s the last one … he doesn’t look like he’s going to last’,” Deanna remembers.
Two local doctors had arrived and one stayed with him as he was rushed by ambulance to hospital in Melbourne. He clinically died on the way in.
Deanna said the doctor didn’t think he could bring him back, but gave it one more go.
All these years later they can joke about that. Deanna says they’re Christians so they believe that God just didn’t want him quite so soon.
Graham says it was more about job protection – God didn’t want him up there because he knew he would be looking for the top job.
His injuries were horrific including broken legs, hip, ribs, pelvis and spleen and his stomach jammed up into his chest. The doctors decided they had no option but to operate to bring his stomach out of his chest.
He wasn’t expected to get through the night, and if he did, the brain injury was profound. ‘We were told he would be a vegetable,’ was the colloquial term for the devastating news.
He was unconscious for two weeks.
As all this was happening, Deanna and the two girls, Barb, 10 and Doris, 13, were in Box Hill Hospital with multiple injuries, and six-year-old Adam was in the Royal Children’s with broken legs, and a hairline fracture of the skull that brought on an epileptic fit. The friend was lucky. She escaped with a black eye.
Graham was in hospital for four months, followed by a year of intensive rehabilitation.
That was a blessing.
“It was the best thing; they taught him how to read and write again … how to live life again,” Deanna said.
The biggest blow for Graham was not being able to go back to his job at the Board of Works where he’d been a plant operator.
Graham and Deanna say they were fortunate that they owned their house and there was a pay-out which enabled them to buy a small hobby farm and raise their children.
“There’s no way in a million years that anyone would want to go through what we’ve been through,” Deanna says. “It’s blood money, really.”
The Hethertons have two grand-daughters who have just got their licences, and another three about to take that step.
“You can’t lock yourself in the wardrobe all the time. The road is a gamble, but you have to live and just hope they are not stupid about it,” Deanna said.
Having said that, it wasn’t a young and stupid driver who caused their grief.
