Peter Holmes a Court looks ahead after facing the past

Peter Holmes a Court speaks for the first time about the tragic accident on the eve of his wedding which killed one of his guests.

Peter Holmes a Court and Alissa Everett at home outside the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Picture: Alissa Everett

Peter Holmes a Court says the small pieces of glass and metal ­embedded in his left leg are “a strange metaphor” for the tough emotional process he has gone through over the past two years.

That shrapnel was buried in his leg in a train accident on the eve of his wedding to American photo­grapher Alissa Everett in 2014, a tragedy which killed one of their wedding guests and injured the new couple and many of their guests.

The metaphor is about things working their way to the surface. The glass and metal fragments in his leg were at first ignored, then sat painfully inside him before only recently starting to work their way out, just like his psychological scars. A piece of glass came out of his leg recently and more surgery is scheduled to remove metal ­fragments.

But it was only at the start of June, just before the second anniversary of the wedding, that the 48-year-old eldest son of Australia’s first billionaires, Robert and Janet Holmes a Court, accepted that he also needed to work harder to get over the psychological ­impact of the tragedy.

“It took me a while but I finally realised that I have not been doing what I could be doing to be my best for the people I love,” he told The Weekend Australian in Nairobi in his first interview since the accident. “I have been less than I wanted to be, for my wife, for my children and for everybody I care about, and the whole point of life is to be there for the people you love and to show up in the best way.’’

After holding a portfolio of top corporate jobs in Sydney, London and New York, the former co-owner and chief executive of rugby league’s Rabbitohs has ­embarked on a career as a writer and is devoting much of his time to working with Everett to publicise the plight of refugees in Africa and elsewhere.

The train crash.

Working in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East, the couple have found themselves under fire in Congo. They have chronicled the suffering of refugees from South Sudan to Kurdistan with Everett’s charity, www.exposinghope.org, and bodies such as ­UNICEF.

Sitting on the veranda of the couple’s new home on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Holmes a Court said he had been humbled by seeing refugees cope “with unbelievable situations, certainly much worse than mine”.

But in hindsight he realised that he had not paid enough attention to the wounds he suffered when a freight train ploughed into the tourist tram taking members of his wedding party on a scenic tour of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

The couple’s American friend Will Poovey was killed, several other guests suffered broken bones and the impact crushed ­Everett’s right leg and Holmes a Court’s left leg when their seat was rammed into the seat in front of them. “My leg was patched up quickly but stuff was left in there. I was getting a doctor for Alissa and helping other people and it wasn’t until a week later they took a scan of my leg and found a blood clot and threw me into hospital,’’ he says. “I had been flying on airplanes with deep vein thrombosis so I dodged a huge bullet.”

He now believes that since the accident he has allowed himself to feel sorry for himself. “Because other people in that suffered so much more than I did, I sort of ­externalised all my energy into looking after other people. By not dealing with it myself I stayed in it,’’ Holmes a Court says.

“I hadn’t put the past in the past (and) it was defining me. That is the metaphor my body is giving me: there is still stuff coming out and I didn’t look after myself.”