‘Miracle boy’ Oscar Blaxland fell five storeys from Neutral Bay block — and lived

Oscar Blaxland fell five floors from a Sydney unit block aged three. Now 31, he has spoken about his amazing survival of the accident that should have killed him. Read his story.

Oscar Blaxland doesn’t remember falling five floors of a Neutral Bay apartment block at just three years of age.

Now 31, the software sales executive feels detached from the accident that nearly killed him almost three decades ago.

“It is something that just happened to me when I was so young,” Blaxland told The Daily Telegraph.

“It has just always been a part of my life. I don’t remember the accident itself, it is kind of repressed or subconscious trauma you could say in a way but hearing the story from the perspective from the people involved around me is very emotional.”

Blaxland’s story has been told by his mother Charlotte with the release of the book Miracle Boy.

The Neutral Bay apartment block where Oscar Blaxland fell in 1996.

Oscar with both legs in casts after his fall.

At the time, young Oscar was labelled just that as doctors did not expect him to survive the horrific injuries of hitting hard concrete from such a height, which included breaking both legs in three separate places.

Oscar’s dad Andrew was a real estate photographer at the time and took his son to work as he shot the apartment because he and his wife were unable to find a babysitter.

It was from that unit Oscar fell.

X-rays show sustained fractures in bilateral femur bones in both of Oscar's legs after his fall.

The story was covered extensively by media at the time, including The Daily Telegraph.

“I am not a messenger from god put on the earth, I don’t feel like that,” he said when asked if he felt like a “miracle boy/man”.

“I just feel like something crazy happened to me and there was an inexplicable miraculous thing that happened. I just feel like a regular guy, I’m just Oscar.”

Oscar after his fall.

Oscar is now a health 31-year-old. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Charlotte, Oscar and his new wife Kate visited the apartment block for the first time in several years this week.

“Seeing it, it is like, ‘how did I survive this?’,” he said.

Oscar Blaxland when he was three.

“This should have killed me. I’ve got a lot of things that I am grateful for and knowing that I very nearly had all of these things taken away from me, including my life, was pretty emotional.

“It was an emotional experience being back there.”

Charlotte Blaxland with her son Oscar Blaxland and his wife Kate Blaxland. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Physically, Oscar doesn’t have any ongoing health issues although doctors warned his parents he will eventually need both knees replaced as he “doesn’t have a lot of cartilage”.

“Now I am in my 30s, I am getting a bit more pain in my knees, some sharp pain and usually it is the right knee,” he said.

“I am trying to keep them strong. I don’t quite know what the future holds in terms of adult life as someone with very little cartilage in his knees.”

He added: “I don’t know how much longevity I am going to get out of my knees. I am going to try and get as much life out of my natural knees as I can before I go in and get some steel put in there.”

Charlotte explained why it took nearly 30 years to complete the book, which is being sold on her website (charlotteblaxland.com).

“I couldn’t work out where the story ended because although the survival obviously happened immediately and Oscar recovered over a two-year period physically, it was the impact the accident had on us as a family that was ongoing,” the mother of three said.

“There’s kind of two parts to the story, being the miracles we experienced and Oscar’s survival and the second part is how we all went through it as a family.”

Charlotte’s sister is acclaimed film and TV producer Emma Cooper, of Penguin Bloom fame. She is looking at options to tell the story on the small or big screen.

“I’ve done a scriptwriting course and I have been wondering about turning it into a feel-good movie because there is a lot of hope and a lot of encouragement,” Charlotte explained.
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