Love, fate and Chris Walton's freak accident

A FREAK accident. A beloved husband lost. A strange premonition. Did he know his time had come?

Chris Walton

SHE is telling me that life is fragile. That it's a frighteningly brittle thing connecting a series of critical moments the universe creates for us in our long and short lives, a series of events like the one about to transpire for three young men speeding towards her home in a black muscle car on the rain-wet and rolling roads of the Gold Coast hinterland.

We're exploring the random events that placed pioneering Queensland property developer Chris Walton beneath the falling awning that took his life at 11.40am at a Burleigh Heads shopping precinct two days before Christmas last year. Chris's wife and partner of 20 years, Kerry Shepherd, sips tea on the back deck of the couple's two-storey eco-friendly rainforest home in Currumbin Valley. Her dark brown hair is damp because she was caught in an unexpected and heavy rainstorm. Just a random weather event. Came out of nowhere. Her right hand grips her tea cup and her index fingernail softly taps its side.

"I don't know what I believe in," she says. "I don't even know if I believe in God. You know how you hear people say, 'Oh, it was his time to go, his time was up'. Well, you go along with it, but I don't know whether I've ever believed that. But then I think about what happened to Chris and the stuff in the lead-up and what I've found subsequently and the way that it happened.

"We never go to Burleigh Heads. Never. Ever. The fact he was even there. And the fact that he was on the opposite side of the road from the one place that he was going to. There's just too many lightningbolt kind of moments. It's just too weird. Too random. Twenty people should have been killed. Not one. It took him four minutes to die. There wasn't a peep out of him. And there was no pain. It's like it was meant to happen. It’s like…” [she shakes
her head] “…his time was up.”

Kerry keeps noticing things around her as she sits on the deck. The orange and grey coat of a kangaroo emerging from wet scrub surrounding her backyard. Sun rays darting through cloud. The quiet stillness of the valley. Then we hear the screech of braking car tyres outside her home built on the slope of a hill on Tallebudgera Connection Road. She draws a sharp breath. She knows what’s coming next and it makes her wince, the terrifying crunch of a speeding vehicle colliding with an immovable object.

“Oh shit,” she says, palm to her mouth. A man’s screams echo across her property:

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh. Aaaaaaaahhhhhh.”

“Oh God,” she says.

She leaps from the table. Kerry is a fit 50-year-old. A runner. A surfer. She grabs her mobile phone from the kitchen bench and sprints up her gravel driveway. And in her mind she thinks about her husband beneath that fallen awning, her beloved Chris in his final moment. That moment last December stopped the frenetic 24-hour activity of the Gold Coast from spinning. It brought the communities of Burleigh and Currumbin together to celebrate the remarkably well-liked man behind Currumbin’s award-winning Ecovillage sustainable community development; an outgoing 54-year-old surfing nut whose final act on this Earth was to push two children away from a
falling awning.

Kerry is thinking about the call she received from her friend Harlee Sawachika, a Burleigh Heads shop owner who told her there had been an accident on James Street. The feeling inside her as she sprints up the driveway to the car crash is the same one she had as she drove with her 13-year-old son, Fin, towards the awning accident. Her mind races with the same questions. What the hell am I going to have to deal with here? What's it going to look like? Is it going to be gory? Is it life-threatening? Is it horrific?

Some 50m up a steep hill from Kerry's house, the black muscle car's rear end has compressed into a thick roadside tree. Three young men, late teens, spill from the car. They're uninjured. The car's driver and owner is wailing over the destruction of his car, mercifully not because of an injury. Kerry phones police. The young men are in shock. One more half-rotation of the skidding vehicle and these boys would have met that tree head-on. Or they could have missed the tree completely and sailed down a valley ravine. Defining moments.

They don't respond to Kerry's questions. But she's patient and caring. Are you cold? Do you need blankets? An hour later, the car is being towed and the men are being assessed by emergency services. Shaken, we lumber back to the table where Kerry's tea has gone cold. "Did that just happen?" Kerry asks. She raises her eyebrows and gives a half-smile, one of those head-shaking half-smiles you might offer the universe if it had just started raining while you stood on the side of a highway fixing the flat tyre on the way to your mum's funeral. More a plea than an expression. Just stop. I give up. You win. "Welcome to my life," she says.

Kerry Shepherd spent her youth waiting for her world to end. She was raised a Jehovah's Witness, one girl in the middle of four brothers. Her childhood was spent door-knocking houses with her mum and dad around homes on the NSW Central Coast and, later, in country Queensland. She was never encouraged to pursue a career. She was encouraged to prepare for Armageddon.

At 17, she embarked on an 11-year marriage that ended when Kerry realised that neither her marriage nor her faith were working. "I left the church and the marriage at the same time," she says. "I started life at 28. I started all over again. It was pretty fabulous. It was like being born again. Not born again to religion, born again out of religion."

She met Chris Walton during the Gold Coast's 1990s property boom. She was working in property management and town planning. Chris was working as an architect and valuation manager. On the back deck, Kerry turns her head to her yard. "Look," she says. Another kangaroo hops from the scrub towards a small dam in the back yard. This kangaroo is missing the joey that is normally by its side. Beyond the back yard are three tin sheds holding the recycled timbers and materials with which Chris was going to build a home in the ecologically sustainable community the couple built from their dreams.

We drive to The Ecovillage at Currumbin, two minutes from Kerry's home. The afternoon sun shines and the whole place seems frozen in a fairytale. This is a place where kids ride bikes until dark, eat apples and oranges from the trees of neighbours and have hose fights with village water.

For 10 years Kerry and Chris scribbled ideas and sketches on a whiteboard bearing their mission statement: "To successfully develop the world's best ecologically sustainable development before the year 2011." They achieved this by 2008, creating a 60ha village of sustainable housing and architecture, a green space for 147 home-owners to live self-sufficiently. It was recognised with 35 global and national awards. In 2008 it won the Prix d' Excellence from the International Real Estate Federation, which described the project as "the world's best environmental development".

Kerry weeps as we drive through the village. A bouquet of flowers is tied to a pole on a creek bridge with a note from residents paying tribute to "our visionary Chris Walton".

Two weeks after his death, the Currumbin RSL hosted a celebration of Chris's 54 years on Earth. Some 650 people turned up. Chris worked at his friendships, nurtured and treasured them. Always there for a midnight chat. Always there with a well-timed letter. There were people from all walks of his life, groups of friends who'd never met, connected by a man who lived four lifetimes in one. His surfer mates met his uni mates. His developer mates met his mates from the men's choir he co-founded to sing four-part harmonies and re-enact Monty Python sketches. Chris was a wag. A yarn spinner. He was the guy in the group photograph using a Coke bottle lid as a pirate eye patch.

"He was charismatic and brilliant and intelligent," Kerry says. "But I don't have him up on a pedestal because he was a pretty bloody hard character to live with. He had a depth to him. He wasn't always the happy guy."

It was Chris's irrepressible drive that saw him realise their Ecovillage dream, but it had a cost. "He was always challenging things. He was a perfectionist. Something was always not quite right. And if something is always not quite right, are you ever really happy? Chris had a therapy session every second week for the 20 years that I knew him."

Life is fragile. A frighteningly brittle thing. At the time of his death, Chris was facing bankruptcy in the wake of a Gold Coast development crash.

Back at her home, Kerry casts her eyes around a house she wants to sell. It's too emotional here now. Chris is wrapped up in every window pane, every door handle, every kitchen drawer. "We've been living on the bones of our arse financially for two or three years," Kerry says. "We're like the last man standing in the development industry on the Gold Coast. There's been 35 developers go bust. All we wanted to do was finish [the Ecovillage] and hopefully get down there to live. We were just hanging in there, trying to sell the remaining land. There was still 20 blocks left to sell. Now there's about 15."

Kerry takes a deep breath. She shakes her head and pieces together the final critical moments the universe created for Chris Walton in December 2012.

Three nights before his death, Chris and Kerry were at a dinner party with friends who were close enough to be concerned about Chris's struggles to sell the remaining Ecovillage blocks. But on this night, Chris was in high spirits. He had, Kerry says, finally let go of his near-obsessive fight to see his dream reach a happy ending. He was resolved in his thoughts. He had plans to recoup his losses. He would, he said, be taking two months off to be with his son, Fin, who was growing too accustomed to being without his dad for extended periods. Then he would be back. Better, brighter than ever. "We've created that," he said of the Currumbin Ecovillage. "People are living our dream. That's amazing. Their kids are living happy lives. I'm good with it."

Kerry was deeply comforted to hear those words. Then he finished his mini speech with words she wasn't so happy to hear. "I could die happily now," he said resolutely. "My life's work is done." Kerry challenged him on this immediately. "You've got so much in you," she said. Chris did not disagree. But his statement was fact: he could die a happy man.

On Sunday morning, December 23, Chris woke at dawn and slipped out of the house quietly for an early morning surf. Later, Chris and Kerry were having a couple from the Ecovillage over for lunch. The couple were expecting a baby. After his surf, Chris phoned Kerry. He told her he wanted to buy a baby book as a Christmas gift for the couple. He wanted to buy them what he considered the Bible for baby parenting, Steve Biddulph's The Secret of Happy Children. He told her he would go to a book store he once frequented on West Burleigh Road, Burleigh Heads. He phoned again while Kerry was busily preparing lunch. "Did you know that book shop has closed down?" he said. "Don't worry about it," Kerry replied. "We've got a couple of days to Christmas; we'll get it in the next couple of days."

"No, no," Chris said. "I really want to give it to them today. There's that new-agey bookshop in the Burleigh arcade. I'll go to that."

"Honey, it's Sunday," Kerry said. "It won't be open."

"It's Christmas, maybe it will be," Chris said. "I'm just going to have a look."

"All right," Kerry said. "But it's nearly lunchtime, can you hurry back?"

"OK, no probs," Chris said. "See you honey."

It was classic Chris Walton. Putting pressure on himself to do something nice for someone else. Not quitting at the first hurdle.

The next phone call Kerry received that morning was from her friend Harlee Sawachika. She greeted Harlee the way people greet dear friends. "Harlee!" she exclaimed. "How are you?" Kerry rambled smalltalk pleasantries until Harlee forced her way into the conversation. "Look, love, stop," she said. "Stop. Something's happened. You need to come to Burleigh. There's been an accident. You really need to come."

"Put Chris on," Kerry said.

"I can't," Harlee said. And there was a pause.

Kerry was right about the shop in the arcade running off James Street, Burleigh Heads. It wasn't open that day. Leaving the bookstore, Chris decided to visit his old friend and former flatmate, Harlee, who runs the Sublime Interiors & Living store on James Street.

"He was like a brother to me," says Harlee. "A beautiful man. He just popped in. It was quick because there were a lot of people around. I commented on how well he looked. He was very happy. He looked vibrant. I said to myself, 'You look the best you've ever looked'. And then he was off and I didn't see him again after that."

On her back deck, as rain falls over Currumbin Valley, Kerry details what happened next between bouts of tears and painful smiles. Harlee told Chris her parents were walking down James Street and that they'd love to see him. So he crossed the road and called out to them. "He caught up with them and they were standing under the awning talking, all laughing."

The group was standing in view of a shop assistant working in She Shops at Burleigh, one of three small fashion boutiques that the awning of Equity House sheltered. This shop assistant, who had to stop working at the store after the incident, was able to later tell Kerry what she saw in the moments preceding the awning collapse.

"He was telling a joke, a yarn, and they were all laughing," Kerry says. "And she remembered thinking, 'God, that guy is so happy'. And - Chris would hate this part - the dress shop attendant said, 'Guys of that age are normally grumpy. But isn't he gorgeous.' And next thing you know it happened.

"There was Harlee's mother and father and her sister and her two little boys. And Chris was meeting the little boys and he was bending over to shake their hands ... " On her back deck, Kerry briefly recreates this moment. It was something her husband did with kids. Got down on their eye level. Met them on their terms. The last thing Chris Walton did with his life before the awning fell was to smile and bend down to greet another human being. "And it was because of this that he was able to bear the brunt of the fall of the awning and push the little boys into a bit of an alcove," Kerry says.

She weeps at this. Her tears break the still silence in her little patch of Currumbin Valley. "The awning crashed down but it was on a hinge, so it fell down and then it went back up again. And when it came back down it didn't come back down all the way because it was hinged.

"So then I spoke to some other guys who were at a cafe who raced across the road to see Chris, who by that stage is walking to a [shop] wall." Kerry's voice softens. "They help him sit down and then they help him lie down. And then he became hard of breath. It just got worse and worse. They put him into the recovery position. He has not said a word. No noise of pain. No screaming. No blood. I had a really nice chat with one man and he said his breath just got harder and harder to take and it just stopped. And the man cried and he said, 'I've never been with someone who died before but it was so peaceful. It was like the most peaceful thing I've ever seen in my life.' He'd been hoping I would contact him because he wanted to tell me that and he said, 'If I die, I want to die like that'."

Kerry doesn't know what happened to cause the awning to collapse. Witnesses reported hearing "loud cracks" before it fell. Hundreds of people were in James Street at that moment yet only five other people were injured by the collapse. The coroner's findings are expected in coming weeks. Kerry is bracing herself for a potential legal storm she fears she won't be able to afford, much less face. "I'm gonna have to think about it sooner or later," she says. "As far as I'm concerned this can't happen again in a public spot. Chris would want me to makes sure this doesn't happen again. I'm working alongside the coroner's office to ensure the right inspections are done so it never happens again. It's a total wake-up call, that's the crux of the conversations I'm having with the coroner."

She prefers to think about the days and weeks after the accident. The hundred locals who flocked to her home for an impromptu working bee. The community surfboard "paddle out" in Chris's honour. The Ecovillagers who created a food roster for Kerry and Fin. The white barricade erected around the accident site that quickly turned into a mural for strangers, friends and family to write on: "Love you Chris, you have left a mighty legacy and will always be remembered"; "The most beautiful man I have ever met"; "Chris Walton, 1958-2012, visionary + creator of the Currumbin Valley Ecovillage. We live your vision. We love you."

Between an endless list of obligations, Kerry finds herself wandering aimlessly through her home some days, flicking through Chris's belongings, lingering on his pictures, dwelling on his notes.

"Chris kept everything," she says. "I found this scrap of paper where he'd written something on his 19th birthday. He was on his own and he was surfing, camping up near Agnes Water [north of Bundaberg]. He'd been up there a few days and he was lamenting about life."

He wrote: "I wonder what my purpose in life is? Wish I knew." Then, at the end of the day, he wrote: "Well, a pretty uneventful day on this planet. Oh well, this times three and I'm out of here anyway."

"Who writes something like that on their 19th birthday?" Kerry wonders. "He was three years shy of that statement."

Kerry then found another scrap of paper on Chris's desk. It was dated May 2012. He had scribbled some notes about a troubling dream he'd woken from. "I'm under a utility building," he wrote. "It falls. I am crushed. I will not get out."

Kerry doesn't dwell on these things. At the table on her back deck, she simply raises her eyebrows and shrugs her shoulders. She offers one of those half-smiles to the universe. Just stop, all right. That's enough now.