Maroubra surfer Javier Silvestre survives Bali accident

“I would be dead if I wasn’t so strong from surfing,” long time friend of the Bra Boys credits the sport with saving his life after a horror crash overseas

Javier Silvestre has months of recovery ahead of him. Picture: John Appleyard

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It was a pitch-black night when Javier Silvestre found himself lying alone in a rice field unable to move.

The Mascot local had just shattered dozens of bones and was in excruciating pain.

He was convinced he was going to die there.

The speedometer was clocking 90km an hour when Mr Silverstre was thrown from his motorbike in Bali on September 8.

He had been riding a familiar stretch of road when a light blinded him and he careered off.

Javier says he is “just happy to be at home”. Picture: John Appleyard

Among his injuries were 17 broken ribs, three displaced vertebrae and a lung which was slowly filling up with blood.

He said he nearly succumbed to a light and warmth as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

“I knew I needed to go to heaven. I felt ready. But then the light disappeared and I realised I was in a rice field and I was in a lot of pain.”

Mr Silvestre managed to fumble for his phone and call for help.

“I couldn’t move and I needed to pee. So I peed my pants and just laid there. I didn't care.”

“I waited and waited and waited and then the ambulance came.”

Javier Silvestre before the accident

Surfing at Maroubra

The 50-year-old father of two found himself in a sketchy hospital in Denpasar, where nurses administered pain killers with the swipe of a credit card and doctors misread X-rays.

“I remembered they said I had four broken ribs but the pain was so intense in my (spinal) column, I knew it’s not only the ribs”.

With grave concerns for the quality of his treatment, girlfriend Anne Chalet arranged for a $47,500 air ambulance to take him to Perth.

It was then doctors identified the full list of his injuries, including a tear in his aorta.

“1.5 litres of blood had gone into my right lung,” he said.

Whisking him into an operating theatre, doctors told his girlfriend: “It’s not 100 per cent he is going to come back from this.”

“I heard it and I said to her ‘I love you, tell my kids I love them and please I want to be cremated’”.

He survived the operation, only to go back under the next day to realign three vertebrae in his back.

“1mm more and I would be a paraplegic,” he said.

Javier Silvestre with Sunny Abberton after his first surfing lesson.

Mr Silvestre is now a much loved member of Maroubra’s surfing tribe, after Sunny Abberton first introduced him to a board 17 years ago.

“Thanks to Sunny I became a surfer, and I became stronger. I would be dead if I wasn’t so strong from surfing.”

Mr Silvestre is desperate to return to the water but has lost 17kg — so much he barely recognises himself. He is also bound by the back brace for at least three more months.

Family and friends are now scrambling to pay for the Air Ambulance which carried him home. So far, they’ve managed to raise $34,900.

“I didn’t know I had so many people who loved me and supported me. I feel very blessed.”

To help Javier Silvestre, head to Javier's Medivac Fund