A hiker who fell down a waterfall had to “carry” his broken leg for days as he crawled towards safety.
Neil Parker, 54, from Queensland in Australia, was trekking near Brisbane when he fell 20ft at the beauty spot.
The experienced hiker said yesterday: “I cartwheeled and slammed into the rock and landed in the creek at the bottom.”
Neil said he had to “carry” his leg after it “clean snapped in half” and the whole bottom of his limb “came loose”.
He also fractured his wrist in the fall.
Neil’s family launched a search operation with the help of Brisbane Bushwalkers community. A search-and-rescue helicopter spotted Neil a day after the alarm had been raised and winched him to safety, before taking him to hospital in Brisbane.
Neil had damaged his phone in the waterfall and decided to crawl to a clearing where he hoped he would be seen.
He said: “I’d get about a metre, a metre-and-a-half, each time before I had to stop and take a break.
“I just couldn’t believe it. It’s only two miles but it took two days to cover.
“I was thinking that I was never going to get there.”
An experienced guide with Brisbane Bushwalkers, Neil said his knowledge had been vital to his survival and revealed he had set out well-prepared with items such as a first aid kit, a compass and even a sleeping bag.
Orthopaedic surgeon Nicola Ward told reporters that Neil’s recovery was going “extremely well”.
She said she had “never heard any such survival effort with two broken limbs”.
Neil is expected to take eight weeks to recover.
