Remember When: Main Beach’s Tracy Bawden was hit by a motorcycle after previous injury

TRACY Bawden was carrying the key to her independence when a motorcycle smashed into her at Surfers Paradise.

Flashback: Main Beach girl’s coma

Gold Coast Bulletin, Saturday May 6, 1989

TRACY Bawden, after a 12-year struggle against the legacy of brain damaged caused by a teenage horse riding accident was carrying the key to her independence when a motorcycle smashed into her at Surfers Paradise.

When Tracy was admitted to Gold Coast Hospital in yet another coma, the keys to her small Main Beach were in her handbag.

Her mother, whose love was said to have restored Tracy to “a life of sorts” after her first tragic head injury waited by her hospital bed for permission to airlift her back to Melbourne.

“The second time around it’s hard — very hard,” said Jan Rule, who nursed Tracy back to a semblance of mental normality after the girl was thrown by a horse which bolted when frightened by a low-flying aircraft many years earlier.

Gold Coast History: Gold Coast Bulletin 1989, May 6. Front page.

“But life is a gift, and all I want now is to take her home and care for her all over again,” she said.

“The doctors can’t tell us whether she will come out of the coma but she recovered from the first brain surgery after being unconscious for four and a half months.

“At least we still have her with us and I can only pray that she will come out of this coma.”

Tracy was born on the Gold Coast in the old Southport Hospital in 1962.

Following her first injury Tracy recovered somewhat and was able to live independently.

The Bulletin’s archives do not contain any information on her fate.