By Kath Gannaway
The car hurtling towards him on Maroondah Highway, on the morning of 30 September 2010, was about 100 metres from him.
It was just after 6am.
Behind the wheel of the Lancer, coming towards him at a fast speed, was a 24-year-old Mount Waverley man, on his way home from a night-time cleaning job. His friend was in the passenger seat.
He can drive in his mind those last 100 metres and counts … one, pause … two, pause … “at the very last second I thought anything is better than a head-on and I ripped the steering wheel hard left.”
By that time he estimates he was no more than 10 metres from the Lancer.
He says his car would not have moved more than 50 or 60 centimetres, but it was enough to put it on an angle. The Lancer’s passenger side slammed into the driver side corner of Mr Elderhurst’s Prada.
In his mind, he can still hear the sound of tearing metal as the Lancer hit, taking the corner off his car and spinning it.
Four or five people were on the scene within seconds, but they were long seconds for Mr Elderhurst who could see the crumpled remains of the Lancer, and hear the driver calling out for help.
“That’s the only haunting thing for me,” he says. “I wanted to help him … I can still see his face.”
In those moments, he was also struggling to make sense of his own reaction, and injuries.
“My head flew back with the impact, and all this dust and rubbish was coming down and I couldn’t breathe,” he says.
“I remember wondering if it was going to hurt … if choking was going to hurt, then all of a sudden I could breathe again.”
He’s been told since that it takes five seconds for the seatbelt to release after the impact and he says it was the seatbelts that both did the damage, and saved his life.
“It broke some bones and took a lump off my spine, but it stopped me from being killed.”
The scene was carnage, and police didn’t hide their frustration, labeling the Lancer driver’s actions “sheer stupidity … people not driving to the conditions, or to their ability,” Sergeant Shane Miles of the Major Collision Investigation Unit said as he waited for the coroner.
Mr Elderhurst doesn’t disagree with the police officer, but, despite injuries which have changed his life, he says he doesn’t hold a grudge.
Surgery on his knee has been successful … to a degree.
He can now stand upright and walk around but has accepted “… my neck will never come good.”
“I still go fishing and hunting with my mates but instead of going out with them I keep the billy boiling. I would love to be able to go for walks, but I know if I walk into Healesville, I will pay for it later,” he says.
He doesn’t see his response as anything remarkable, saying he has always been “a goer”. “I’ve never held a grudge or harboured regrets…you just get on with it, and I consider myself lucky to get out of that crash with so few injuries, because of the speed involved,” he says.
Mr Elderhurst was asked to make a pre-sentence statement when the driver went to court on culpable driving charges in August, and he did.
“I explained the stupidity of it, and the cost to me, but I said I didn’t hold a grudge.
“I’ve made my fair share of mistakes … he did a silly thing, we all do silly things,” he says.
“I made it known (in the statement) that he has had his punishment by killing his mate and living with an acquired brain injury, and other injuries, that’s punishment.”
Had the crash happened on the way down to Lilydale, had his grandson been killed, or injured, he says he knows he would feel differently. “It could happen to anyone, any time …”
