Family and friends remember Imbil crash victim Cale Gilbert-Hall

As the Mary Valley tries to come to terms with the senseless loss of a beautiful young life, his mum and best friend have shared some treasured memories, and hinted at the demons that haunted Cale after losing his brother.

Eleanor said her favourite memories of Cale are of his time volunteering with the SES.

True to form, the last time Theo Pierce saw his best mate Cale Gilbert-Hall alive he helped to move a new fridge into Theo’s house.

Along with another friend, Zac, Cale responded immediately to a request from Theo, 26, to help move the fridge into his Imbil home on Saturday, September 30.

“Just off the cuff on a Saturday, last minute notice I called him,” Theo said.

“I asked ‘can you give me a hand?’, he goes ‘yeah mate, yep’, straight on it.”

After sharing a laugh with Theo over the run-down condition of his old fridge, Cale drove off in his Mitsubishi Lancer.

Unbeknown to Theo, that was the last time he would see the friend he described as “like a brother, joined at the hip”.

Theo (top) said he and Cale (bottom) were "like brothers, joined at the hip”.

Later that evening, around 9pm, Cale drove along Brooloo Road and took the turn onto Mary Valley Road, heading towards Brooloo where he lived with his father, George.

According to police reports, Cale’s car drove off Mary Valley Road near the intersection with Rodwell Rd and hit a tree, killing him instantly at the age of 19.

Because the car had gone down into a ditch and was obscured by some bushes, the wreckage was not seen by motorists passing along the road that evening.

While it wasn’t out of character for Cale to not return home, his mother, Eleanor, said the family “felt a real sense of urgency to find him” upon realising he was missing on Sunday morning.

Being off-duty from her role as an auxiliary firefighter at Imbil Fire Station, Eleanor drove around the region looking for Cale in his usual haunts.

It was while she was driving towards Barambah Dam around 9.30am that Cale’s car was discovered and emergency services, including one of Eleanor’s colleagues from Imbil along with crews from Kenilworth Fire Station, were called to the scene of the crash.

Eleanor missed the alert due to the poor mobile reception around the dam.

Eleanor Hall (middle) said Cale (right) would always have fun picking on his twin sister, Jera (left): 'They had a very, very close bond', she said.

“I missed the fire call, and then I tried to go to the fire call but Google Maps sent me in the opposite direction so I totally missed it,” she said.

QAS crews declared Cale dead at the scene, and after helping to clear the wreckage Eleanor’s colleague tried unsuccessfully to find her, wanting to give her the tragic news in person.

When Eleanor returned to the Imbil Fire Station later that morning to put away her fire gear, she noticed the trucks had returned and called her colleague, giving voice to her worst fears.

“I tried to ring him and couldn’t get through, and then he rang me and I said ‘is it Cale?,” Eleanor said.

“He said, ‘yes, just stay there I’m coming’.

“And in that moment I knew, it hit me.”

Overwhelmed by a wave of nausea, Eleanor was sick in the fire station toilets until her colleague returned to take her home, where she has had the support of her daughter, Cale’s twin sister, Jera.

Despite “going through the motions” in the days since her world fell apart, planning Cale’s funeral, tentatively scheduled for Friday, October 13, Eleanor said she was still numb from the loss of her “cheeky, loveable, ratbag” son.

“I just can’t comprehend it yet, like it’s not real,” she said

“It’s like he’s going to turn up any minute with this cheeky grin and go ‘what the f--k are you doing?’.”

While Eleanor and Theo are reluctant to compare the tragic fate of Cale with that of his older brother, Jorn, the parallels are compelling and inescapable.

Cale's brother, Jorn (left), died following an August 2020 crash to which Eleanor (right) was one of the first responders.

In August 2020, when Jorn was 21, his Toyota Camry left Yabba Creek Rd in Imbil, around 15km from the scene of Cale’s crash, and hit a light pole.

Then on duty, Eleanor was one of the first responders on the scene, helping to extract her son from the wreckage of his car and travelling in the LifeFlight chopper to Brisbane’s Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

Jorn would die the following day from an “unsurvivable brain injury”.

While yet to come to terms with the loss of her second son, Eleanor said the two incidents were “very similar, but very different in a lot of ways”.

“With Jorn I was there to help peel the roof back, and I was in the car with him,” she said.

“And I did go to the hospital with him in the chopper, and we were in the hospital so we had that time with him.

“Whereas this just feels really surreal, because there’s nothing, there’s no urgency.”

Friends and family of Cale Gilbert-Hall remember him as a ‘giving, random, quirky kid ‘.

When asked if Cale ever spoke to him about the death of his elder brother with whom he was so close, Theo said it was a “tender subject” but admitted his friend became “a bit more of a daredevil in his life” from that point on.

“He was very close to Jorn,” Theo said.

“He did talk about him a lot, and he did share a lot about the demons that came with it.”

But at this time, less than a week after the crash, Eleanor prefers to put aside the unmistakable, dark parallels with Jorn and remember Cale for his “generous heart” and “infectious, cheeky smile”.

Eleanor’s favourite memories of Cale are of his own time volunteering with the State Emergency Service, assisting locals affected by the 2022 Imbil floods.

Eleanor said her favourite memories of Cale were of his time volunteering with the SES.

With some people trapped on the other side of a railway bridge needing fuel for a generator to power medical equipment, Cale made multiple trips with fuel and other essentials to ensure they could survive.

“My favourite memories are from that time when he was with the SES, because we got to be colleagues and not just mother and son,” Eleanor said.

“It’s very special memories that I have with him.”

Theo remembers Cale as “the most giving, random, quirky kid you’ve ever come across”.

With Theo also a SES volunteer, he had fond memories of working around the clock for two weeks in support of the community.

At one point, with Cale separated from Theo and the rest of the crew by flood, he stripped down to his underwear and ran through the rising flood water to rejoin his mates.

Cale's best friend Theo said he "was a daredevil and a lover, he just loved so hard".

Theo laughed as he recalled the sight of “this young man in his bloody underwear running up this road and down this hill, and then through a bit of flood water screaming ‘I’m running as fast as I can!’.”

“He was a daredevil and a lover, he just loved so hard.”

Testament to the many lives he had touched, a GoFundMe fundraiser set up to pay for Cale’s funeral costs has met and exceeded its target of $15,00o, and the Imbil Bowls Club has donated their venue and food for his wake.

“It‘s been awesome, the community support is just incredible,” Eleanor said.

“Everybody knew Cale and everybody that Cale met, he was friends with.

“He was very adored, very adored.”

Donations to Cale’s fundraiser can be made here.

Originally published as Family and friends remember Imbil crash victim Cale Gilbert-Hall