Man escapes uninjured after car crashes down steep embankment and into Blue Lake at Mt Gambier
A MAN has miraculously escaped harm as he was thrown from a car after it smashed through a guard rail and plunged down a steep embankment into Mt Gambier’s Blue Lake.
A MAN has miraculously escaped harm as he was thrown from a car after it smashed through a guard rail and plunged down a steep embankment into Mt Gambier’s Blue Lake.
The car was left partly submerged after the incident about 11.30pm on Friday. Rescue crews used a boat to find the car, which later sank, and the driver, 22, from the South- East, was eventually found halfway down the slope.
It took crews more than four hours to rescue him in cold and windy conditions.
He was put on a stretcher, lowered down the embankment into a rescue boat, and then taken to hospital as a precaution. Police also took blood samples for testing.
Metropolitan Fire Service personnel were called in to conduct the rescue, with an urban search and rescue trained officer advising on the difficult operation.
SES volunteers from Millicent and Mt Gambier and CFS crews from Naracoorte assisted with the rescue. A helicopter from Warrnambool, in Victoria, also attended.
The incident forced SA Water to cut Mt Gambier’s drinking supply from Blue Lake over fears of fuel contamination from the car.
SA Water operations manager Mark Gobbie said water — which met national health standards — was being supplied from a borefield.
“Customers may notice a slight difference in taste and/or colour,” Mr Gobbie said. “We are still assessing the next steps in removing the car from the lake, but it’s currently not posing any safety or other risks.
“Water supply will be reverted back to the Blue Lake once we’ve had time to make sure water quality is unaffected.”
It is not the first time a car has wound up in the Blue Lake.
More than 80 years ago, racing driver John Dutton survived a similar crash after being thrown from his car as it shot over the cliff and sank in 1936.
He was seriously injured but was saved by a tree that broke his landing on the slope.
In 1979, Brice Rivett and his beloved HR Holden took the plunge. Mr Rivett, 19 at the time, was driving around the lake when he was distracted by a Suzi Quatro cassette tape.
“I must have dropped my cigarette or the tape because I reached down to get it and by the time I looked up I was already in the middle of these council roadworks,” the now 59-year-old said.
“I went from bitumen and gravel and then I just slid over the edge where there wasn’t a guard rail. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt so I reached across and pushed the passenger side door open and fell out.
“I hit my head and cracked my knee. This seems to happen about every 40 years. There was one in February 1936, again in 1979, and now the one last night.”