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FROM ADVERSITY SPRINGS HOPE ETERNAL… |
 Clare on her wedding day, long after the horrendous accident in Australia
Clare and Alan will be flying out to
Australia in early December to meet after all these years, the
man who saved Clare that fateful night 17 years ago - Don Moye © Call sign Magazine MM6 |
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couple off to Oz for emotional reunion… There is a saying "From Adversity Springs Hope Eternal" and for Clare Jones, wife of Dial-a-Cab driver Alan Jones (O31) that prophesy has become a reality. On 22 December 1989, Clare was travelling on an overnight coach along the Australian highway at Clybucca Flat, north of Sydney, when the driver of an oncoming coach fell asleep at the wheel. The resulting high-speed head-on collision between the two coaches left 35 dead and 41 injured. Clare’s coach driver, who was asleep in his bunk at the rear while his relief driver was in control, was one of the few along with Clare, who survived the carnage. Although alive, Clare sustained serious injuries, amongst which were ribs that had penetrated her spine. Later, while in hospital, she was told she was unlikely ever to walk again. With a combined speed of around 200 kms/ph, the impact concertinaed the two coaches, each coach burying its’ front end into the other, instantly killing both drivers and those passengers sitting in the seats towards the front up to five rows back. The impact ripped seats from their |
anchorages, throwing passengers around inside the coaches like
puppets, while some were hurled out of the windows with the
force of the collision. Dislodged luggage from overhead racks
added to the chaos and inflicted further injury. The accident
scene from Hell was awash with blood. Body parts were strewn
across the roadway. The incident brought every kind of Australian emergency service agency to the scene. Police and fire brigades were quickly on site, together with ambulance and paramedic crews who patched up the survivors as best they could. A fleet of air ambulances ferried the injured to several nearby hospitals. Australia also has the ‘SES’ - State Emergency Service and volunteer rescuers who attend major incidents and disasters. On duty that bleak night was Don Moye and it was he who pulled Clare from the twisted metal and visited her in hospital during her long months of recuperating and battling to get her life back together. They have remained in contact over the years, but now in a surprise reunion, Australia’s Network 7 TV channel will be reuniting the ‘rescued’ with the ‘rescuer’ as part of Network 7’s ‘Where Are They Now’ series. |
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JACK RUSSELL OUT OF HOSPITAL – AGAIN! "But I wish they’d take this tube out of my throat!" |
The three month saga that 92-year old former DaC
Chairman Jack Russell described to
Call Sign as a catalogue of disasters,
took a step nearer its completion when Jack was
discharged again from the hospital where he had
originally gone in twice previously for a
routine knee replacement operation. Jack Russell was ODRTS Chairman from 1964 to 1969… |
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