Bruce Highway heroes tell of trauma, regret and ‘human decency’
Diving into murky waters to retrieve someone, running towards an exploding truck inferno. Read the heroic acts of bystanders first on scene to Bruce Highway tragedies who did all they could to save another.
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Amid the trauma, grief and recriminations that are a tragic feature of the all too frequently reported crashes along the Bruce Highway, the one bright spot is often the extraordinary feats of heroism shown by ordinary people in support of fellow human beings.
Most recently, former medic Ken Whittaker dived into the Kolan River to try to save the life of a woman who had lost control of her Mitsubishi Triton driven off a bridge in January.
In a phrase often heard from these everyday heroes, Ken said he “just took action” when he first took in the scene and saw nothing was being done to rescue the occupants of the car that had gone off the bridge into the murky waters just moments before.
“There was a handful of people around running straps down and a couple of guys in the water, but you could tell ... that it was very panicked and unorganised,” he said.
“And so it was literally just one of those things where I thought ‘OK I’ll give them a hand’.”
While making repeated attempts to attach a winch strap to the car lying on the river bed under 7m of water, the only moment when “little panic lights” flashed in Ken’s mind came when children’s lunch boxes, pink school bags and toys floated to the surface.
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Shouts from bystanders that “there’s kids in the car!” were thankfully proven to be incorrect when Ken wrenched open the Triton’s back door to find the back seat empty and no child restraints visible.
“It was definitely a relief, a massive relief moment,” Ken said.
Ken was unable to save the life of the 51-year-old Mt Cotton woman who had driven the car, finding her already passed away once he fought his way through to the driver’s seat.
‘There’s always that side of things where you think you could have done more’
While his medic training equipped him with a resilience and mental fortitude to keep the darkest thoughts at bay, Ken still finds himself thinking about how the outcome could have been different if countless prior moments had taken a different course.
“I can admit that I’ve had a couple of moments of ‘coulda, shoulda woulda’,” he said.
“Like if we didn’t stop at the servo we would have been back sooner ... Or if I just held my breath for another 20 seconds the first time I went down I would have found the car and that may have bought some time.
“I feel like there’s always going to be that side of things, where you think you could have done more.”
Having made contact with the woman’s family since the crash, Ken finds those “what if” moments come to him most often when texting her children.
“Especially when I get text messages from her boys ... it sort of just ... brings it all back,” Ken said.
“But not in a traumatic way, it’s just that I can’t even imagine how they would have felt.
“It’d be nice to have a little bit of a chat and see what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling.”
‘I don’t see that I’m a hero there’
Similar to Ken’s account, a Gold Coast man who pulled two men from a truck minutes before it exploded into a massive fireball said he leapt into action motivated only by the knowledge that he was the best person for the job.
The man, who humbly declined to be named, was driving his own truck south along the Bruce Highway near Rockhampton in July 2023 when he saw two trucks clip each other and spiral into a violent crash causing one of the trucks, a B-Double, to catch on fire.
Grabbing a fire extinguisher from his truck, the man tried to put out the fire but could not counter the roaring inferno that engulfed the truck within seconds.
After moving some other bystanders away to safety, he saw two men trying to get out of the cabin of the burning truck.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two guys trying to get out of an overturned (truck) cabin in the centre of the fire,” he said.
“The cabin had actually come off the chassis frame and rolled over onto the ground and was upside down.
“And I kicked their window and pulled them out – one of which was the guy with back injuries and concussion that went to hospital.”
The man, who had more than 10 years’ experience working in marine rescue but had never before attended a road crash, said he did not think of himself as a hero.
“I firmly believe that I’m not a hero, only because … I just happened to be the one there that could react, that was capable of reacting, in the right spot at the right time, for whatever reason that was,” he said.
“If anyone else was in the same position as me, then human nature should have kicked in and they’d have done the same as me, so I don’t see that I’m a hero there.”
‘Heroic acts ... can quite simply be holding somebody’s hand’
Veteran of 30 years’ service in the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service, now working at Noosa Fire Station, Rob Fray has seen countless crashes.
In his time, Rob has seen black spots on the Bruce Highway move northwards from Nambour to Eumundi, then in recent years further north to Maryborough.
He said there have been many occasions in which bystanders have come to the aid of crash victims in the minutes before QFES units arrived at the scene, with some acts of heroism being as simple and heartfelt as holding a victim’s hand or providing a blanket to make them more comfortable.
“On many occasions we’ve seen civilians that have that have performed heroic acts that don’t have to be necessarily diving into a river, they can quite simply be communicating with the victim or holding somebody’s hand, or pulling them out of a car before it catches on fire,” he said.
To Rob’s mind, any bystander who steps in to help at a crash scene is a hero due to such actions being furthest from their mind when they left home or work that day.
“We understand that it’s our line of work and we’re trained to do that work ... but civilians don’t really do that,” he said.
“Sometimes people go over and above to show compassion and to perhaps even risk their own lives to save another person that they’ve never met before.”
Even those civilians who are more attuned to dealing with traumatic incidents including doctors find themselves thrown out of their comfort zone in the chaotic aftermath of a crash.
‘People need take responsibility for themselves’
Former investigator Steve Webb estimated he had attended to around 500 crashes in his 26 years’ services to the Wide Bay Burnett Forensic Crash Unit, and told of an emergency room doctor who had a new-found respect for paramedics after stopping to assist at a fatal crash involving two motorcyclists.
“He said to us, ‘listen, I am a highly trained doctor and I had nothing’,” Steve said.
“He said ‘I’ve got a new perspective on paramedics and the job they do in the field’.
“Obviously in the field, it’s a bit different to the emergency room; you’ve got a glass, blood, you’ve got bits of car, bits of motorbike.”
On the vexed subject of whether the government should invest more in maintenance and improvements to the Bruce Highway to reduce the steadily increasing road toll, Steve said the highway “definitely needs work” but the onus needed to be put on drivers to take more care.
“In the end, people need take responsibility for themselves ... you could build a bloody beautiful highway and they’ll still find ways to kill themselves,” he said.
‘We get complacent about this potentially dangerous stretch of road’
Experienced paramedic Brodie Rollason agreed with Steve’s assessment, saying drivers particularly in regional Queensland can become complacent.
“I think a lot of our really significant crashes do occur on the Bruce Hwy. They’re long, straight stretches of road, which can be really fatigue-inducing when you’re not getting regular stimulation,” she said.
“Certainly in regional Queensland, we do a bit more driving between our destinations on the Bruce Hwy.
“I mean, who of us hasn’t gone up to Cairns for a weekend or to Airlie Beach?
“But I think we do get really complacent about this potentially dangerous stretch of road.”
From the countless crashes that she has attended, Brodie remembers a fatal incident where a maroon Camry sedan veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a B-double truck travelling south on the Bruce Hwy near Bluewater on January 15, 2020.
While the instant death of the 26-year-old driver was tragic, Brodie said it was “really disappointing to see that kind of behaviour because it impacts so much more than an individual person”.
“These choices impact families, they impact livelihoods, they impact abilities, and they impact first responders as well,” she said.
“Road safety is everyone’s responsibility, so I think it can be a bit frustrating at times to see the hurt, harm, and horror those small decisions can cause.”
‘The Bruce Highway should be a four-lane highway the whole way’
But another civilian highway hero and experienced truck driver, Niell Graham from Nambour, said it was the driving conditions on the Bruce Highway that made it so deadly.
Mr Graham called 000 and located an injured driver who had been thrown from his truck in a crash on the highway near Gin Gin about 15 years ago.
“It all happened very quickly,“ he said.
“...When I got out we (initially) couldn’t find the driver ... he was pretty messed up but he was alive and carrying on,” he said.
“There’s stretches of Bruce Highway that are really good and some which are bad.
“The Bruce Highway should be a four-lane highway the whole way. That would solve a lot of problems.”
‘It was what I felt was the right thing to do’
But Ken Whittaker said drivers need to take responsibility for their own fitness to operate a vehicle along the busy Bruce Highway, particularly in preventing against the fatigue likely to strike when driving along long featureless stretches like in Kolonga.
“People are responsible for themselves and their own fatigue and their own concentration,” he said.
“Everyone gets a little complacent in their driving.
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a full night’s sleep if you can’t get home basically.”
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When pressed again on whether he considers himself a hero, Ken said such suggestions focusing the attention on him were “embarrassing”.
“It was just what I felt was the right thing to do,” he said.
“It seems like people are making a massive deal out of something that I just see as a common act of decency.”
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