Jodie Mannix is still suffering four years after her car hit a kangaroo near Clare

When a kangaroo crashed through the front windscreen of Jodie Mannix’s car, it changed her life forever.

Jodie Mannix and her husband Andrew were about 10kms outside the country town of Clare when a car travelling toward them hit a kangaroo.

“The kangaroo became airborne and came through our windscreen and it hit me in the head and neck and kept travelling through the car and out the back window,” Jodie says.

Andrew Mannix immediately stopped their four-wheel-drive vehicle, assessed the situation and then acted on pure instinct.

He punched out the remaining glass in the windscreen, leant over to support his unconscious wife’s head and neck then drove immediately to the Clare hospital emergency department.

“He stopped and checked I had a pulse and then supported my neck and head,” Jodie, 55, says about that shocking day in September, 2020.

“I had a brain injury, I had a punctured lung, a fracture to my neck, an injury to my spleen and some fractures in my neck and shoulder.”

Jodie Mannix recovering in hospital with her son Lewis. Picture: supplied by family

After being stabilised, Jodie was rushed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital where Intensive Care Unit staff treated her injuries, including making a hole in her skull to relieve pressure.

Her three adult children rushed to Jodie’s bedside where she was initially placed in an induced coma and then after waking, suffered amnesia for 35 days.

It was only once she managed to pass a test checking her gradually improving memory abilities that Jodie was shifted to the brain injury unit at Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre to work on her recovery.

Rehabilitation focused on her learning to walk again and on rebuilding her memory.

Jodie still has no memory of her accident four years ago, there are no memories around the couple packing for a long trip and no memories around them leaving their northern Adelaide home.

Now Jodie, who works in a Catholic primary school supporting children with additional needs, also works on managing her long-term injuries, including cognitive fatigue, balance, word finding problems along with reactions to light and noise.

There is also concern she nurses over the crash’s impact on her husband and her children.

Jodie says “one of the first things I thought about was about the children, that they had to come to the Royal Adelaide Hospital every single day and see their mother and not know what the outcome might be”.

Jodie Mannix, kangaroo went through her windscreen, horrific accident, now a traffic safety educator. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Jodie and Andrew, who also has been forced to manage his own long-term trauma surrounding the accident, have since revisited the roadside where their lives changed forever.

“It took us a little while to go back but we did, we are both from the country we know kangaroos can be an issue,” Jodie says.

“But that day was an absolute freak (accident), we were in a four-wheel-drive, we had a bull bar in case of animals … but my accident could have happened to anyone and it did, it happened to me.

“I think it was only a matter of millimetres or centimetres and I wouldn’t be here and it changes your world.”