Almost one year on from the devastating Sea World chopper crash that claimed the lives of four Australians, Ms de Silva said she will forever be haunted by memories of the mid-air disaster.

Speaking to the Herald Sun from her home in Lara, she detailed for the first time the last minute decision to take her nine-year-old son Leon on the scenic helicopter flight on January 2 this year.

What was meant to be a short and exciting experience, quickly turned to tragedy when their chopper collided with another within seconds of taking off.

Their aircraft uncontrollably plummeted to the ground and crashed on the edge of a sandbar with the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau later categorising the impact as “likely not survivable”.

Pilot Ashley Jenkinson, Sydney mum Vanessa Tadros and British couple Ron and Diane Hughes were tragically killed.

But Ms Tadros’ son Nicholas, Ms de Silva and Leon miraculously survived.

“When I heard the bang of the helicopters colliding, I thought it was an engine failure,” she said.

“It was a terrifying bang because things started cracking, things started falling on our faces.

“The wind was blowing so bad because the windows were broken … it was just chaos.

“I thought we weren’t going to make it. I thought we were going to crash and die.

“There was nothing else I was thinking at that point, other than death.”

Ms de Silva said she immediately told Leon to shut his eyes.

“I held his arm tight and I pushed him towards me,” she said.

“I said ‘I am not going to let death come to us’.

“I don’t remember anything else, my mind was carried out of the moment.”

Ms de Silva said she woke up in excruciating pain with parts of the helicopter pushing on her shoulder.

“I can’t even explain the feeling, it was horrifying,” she said.

“My whole body felt dead. I couldn’t see properly because the sand and aviation fuel were burning my eyes.

“I felt like I was alive and dying, alive and dying.”

Ms de Silva sustained serious injuries to her shoulder, hip bone, collarbone and both of her legs.

But she said her pain temporarily disappeared when she discovered Leon was alive.

“They said my son was OK and he was going to be flown to hospital,” she said.

“I didn’t feel any pain anymore, I just smiled because it was a miracle he was alive.”

Much to Ms de Silva’s shock, Leon was flown to Brisbane’s Queensland Children’s Hospital – 70km away from her bedside at Gold Coast University Hospital.

“It was so difficult being separated,” she said.

“It was very hard to have him away from me, thinking he was only going to be looked after by others and not his mum.”

The year 4 student was placed in an induced coma after suffering severe facial and head injuries.

He was unconscious for six days before doctors made the call to wake him up.

“They weren’t sure whether he was going to get up or not,” Ms de Silva said.

“I was praying so tight … we needed this boy to breathe, we needed him back.

“I didn’t know if I could survive without him.”

Ms de Silva had to wait a gruelling 20 minutes before she found out via a phone call that Leon was breathing on his own.

In that time, her mind went to a dark place.

“I was just thinking of the negative,” she said.

“I started to think about a burial like where he was going to get buried.”

She said she felt a sense of guilt for Leon’s injuries.

“I made him do the helicopter, he didn’t want to do it, I just wanted to give him an experience,” Ms de Silva said.

“I was feeling really guilty because if he didn’t make it, I’d just cut his life.

“I would feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

In the following days, the pair video called and eventually reunited at Queensland Children’s Hospital on February 10.

“When I was recovering, I was only thinking of ways to go and see him,” Ms de Silva said.

“That was my goal, to do a lot of physiotherapy and be able to sit in a car, be able to move myself from the bed to the wheelchair then the wheelchair to the car.

“When we reunited, we cried, it felt like we died and we were back.

“This boy was taken away from me and now I had him back, it felt really good.”

Ms de Silva said one of their biggest challenges was flying home to Melbourne following the deadly chopper crash.

“I had to prepare Leon that we were going home, that we were going to have to catch a plane again,” she said.

“He was really scared … even for myself, it was hard.

“We had to go through psychology sessions for quite some time and we had to request anxiety medication.”

Now, 12 months on, Leon has returned to school full-time and is back to playing basketball for the Lara Giants.

“He is improving but still finds it difficult to manage his emotions,” Ms de Silva said.

“He gets very emotional over little things. He will just cry, he will bang things in the house.

“When we tell him it’s time to go to bed, he will get angry and upset because he doesn’t understand why it’s bedtime.

“His brain cannot slow down, he can’t think straight. There is a lot of trauma happening in his brain.”

Ms de Silva said her close brush with death had left a lasting legacy.

“It’s been hard, it’s been really hard,” she said.

“If a cup falls on the ground, my brain goes back to the bang of the helicopter.

“Anything that falls down, my heart skips a beat.

“The memories of the crash just run in my head.”

Just last week, she had emergency surgery on her shoulder after damaging her axillary nerve in the crash.

“This means I’m limited when lifting … it seems like this is my new normal,” she said.

There’s no doubt this mother and son have shown true resilience in the face of adversity.

When Leon was just two and half years old, his father died in a horrific car crash while the trio were living together in Kenya.

In 2018, Ms de Silva made the difficult decision to leave Leon and migrate to Australia alone on a student visa as she wanted a better life for them.

Ms de Silva scored a job as a housing services case manager in 2021 which allowed Leon to move to the country a year later.

Despite their trauma, Ms de Silva said she was thankful.

“We survived, we are alive, we are walking,” she said.

“Despite the challenges around us, we are alive.

“I want to go back to exercising, I want to do things I never did.

“So my joy is looking forward to the future with so much happiness.”