Vikki Campion: Heartfelt thanks to the mum who saved my son from drowning

To the mum who was “not from here”, who pulled my toddler son out of the creek, you saved his life and our lives from being forever broken, Vikki Campion writes.

So far this summer, 42 people have drowned, more than half in Australia’s inland creeks, rivers, dams and waterways, and half of those were kids.

I didn’t get your name amid chaos and tears, but to the mum who was “not from here”, you stopped my toddler from becoming number 43.

Time stopped when we realised two-year-old Tom had disappeared — that the boy in the lime-green dinosaur shirt at the top of the crowded slide enclosure at Curtis Park was not Tom, but another fair-haired little boy in the same green shirt, when we called out to him, and he didn’t come.

At that moment, names run through your head — Daniel Morcombe, Cleo Smith, William Tyrrell. All the badges and ribbons you fix to suit lapels in parliament for the days raising awareness for missing children, the taken children, innocent victims of tragic accidents and crimes more sinister.

You scour the road, your gut-twisting, searching the post-New Year’s supermarket rush of moving cars, looking for one size three green T-shirt.

Vikki Campion will be forever grateful to the woman who pulled her son Tom from a creek. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

We split up to cover more ground, calling out, and grandmothers in the park — strangers to us, but not to our situation — kept a lookout for a toddler they’d never met.

You didn’t know how he got there, but you pulled him out of the creek. I couldn’t compose myself to tell you, but a three-year-old girl drowned there, in the Armidale Dumaresq Creek in 2016, chasing ducks. The weeds were high, and the rocks were slippery. Like on Monday.

A coronial inquiry into her death in 2018 called on the council to fence off the play equipment, but the council’s legal counsel told the Coroner they would rather remove the playground than do such a thing.

The council itself found the “depth of the channel and the steep drop off from the bank” were a public safety hazard. You didn’t know that instead of fencing off the old playground, the NSW Government spent $1 million on a new playground adjacent to it, and they didn’t fence that either.

Public backlash ensued, the local state member promised on Facebook, on October 28, 2020, that the council would extend the fence as carers begged for an enclosure to make it accessible for children with disabilities as well as safer for carers of multiple children who don’t have eyes in the back of their head.

In the plan to build the new playground, the council identified two risks, collision with vehicles, now fenced off, and drowning in the creek.

Instead of fencing the playground, the council decided to “reduce water depth and velocity” and “eliminate steep drop-offs” at the creek.

Kids Safe NSW says young children can drown in six centimetres of water — the councils “mitigation” was of instead a “gentle transition to waterway”.

You didn’t know this, but after you left me hugging Tom, a man with no children came and stood beside me in the playground watching the kids.

He laughed after another lady commented on how scary it was, how if she had seen a little one venture off on their own, naturally, she would have raised the alarm.

“It doesn’t take much to get them to go,” he said, and it didn’t sound sinister until I tucked Tom into dinosaur sheets that night, a bed that could have remained empty if you didn’t find him in the weeds.

Did Thomas leave this park he had begged to go to of his own volition or was he enticed?

Had that man come back to watch the fallout, or was he an innocent bystander, watching the children in the playground? Answers that a two-year-old can’t provide, that I’ll never know. But here’s what I do know. To the mum who was “not from here”, who pulled him out of the creek, you saved his life and our lives from being forever broken.

Vikki Campion and her partner Barnaby Joyce with their two sons Sebastian and Thomas. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

You saved us from serving up one plate of dinosaur-shaped pancakes instead of two. There would be no more toddler-duo monster hunts with spatulas sequestered from the kitchen drawer, no one to raid the strawberry patch and return with pink, sticky kisses, no one to crush my lipsticks into the carpet. One cheeky laugh would be missing from trike races and pillow forts.

And I would never forgive myself for losing him. I should have found a way to thank you properly for saving my son’s life.

So, to the mum who is not from here, who put his tiny blue shoes back on, you are hope. You are a desperately-needed reminder that even in the most terrifying of circumstances, a lost child, a lone guy hanging around the playground, a creek where toddlers have drowned, a council that doesn’t want to do anything about it, you were doing the work of angels.

I won’t ever meet you at Curtis Park again, but I thank you privately every night.

I have to read that particular dinosaur book for the millionth time.

Even when he paints everything but the paper and tips jelly down the toilet, I thank you for saving my little boy with a giant character.

There’s a brand new council now, a chance for change — that could still come too late.

To the mum who’s not from here, I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are to me.

Thank you.