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Something wicked this way comes. (Photos: David Hohn)

Hit & Run

From the pages of our new mag.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Written by Dr Gary Hohn (PhD), David Hohn & Barbara Hohn

The Captain Goodvibes’ collectors edition is on stands now, available to purchase online or click here to subscribe and read all of Tracks premium content!

***

It is 9 am, the 20 May 2010 and Damien ‘Damo’ Pears should be at work as a Customs Border Protection officer. Instead, he is staring at an all-white ceiling, blaring theatre lights and four pairs of eyes in protective glasses.

The room is alive with moving caps, gowns and booties. A new mask arrives at the oper- ating table, pauses and then peers down at him. The mask asks a couple of questions and utters words of encouragement, “You’ll feel a small prick and fall asleep…”

Three days earlier, Damo was on holiday chasing 3-5′ waves with four unknown surfers at an isolated beach north of Newcastle. The weather was less than inviting; cold, dark, overcast and squawly.

After a two-hour session, Damo caught his last ride and the whitewash towards the shore. He suddenly stopped 30 metres from the beach. His eyes had spotted some- thing unusual. Four mullet fishermen were in a panic, frantically packing up their gear and loading their boat and Jet Ski onto trailers. Something was drastically wrong!

An alien figure was spiralling, zig zagging and darting in every direction, through the bush, the dunes and onto the beach. A funnel shaped waterspout had gone rogue, escaping the ocean, making landfall. It was now a swirling mass of water, sand, branches and leaves. The roaring sound, deafening. A path of destruction lay in its wake. It had ripped and twisted off tree- tops and snapped branches with consummate ease.

Like a golf wood off the tee, where it was going was anyone’s guess!

Then it all made sense, this was one of the six waterspouts that Damo and the other surfers had spotted earlier on the horizon. Damo was left with two options, tango with the waterspout on the beach or sit it out in the water. Before he had a chance to make a move, the decision was made for him. As if the monster had its own GPS system, it began to track Damo down. With every metre it zeroed in on him, it seemingly multiplied in size, dwarfing Damo’s world, howling like a wheelie bin full of cats.

Then a numbness overcame him. He impulsively reacted by anchoring his feet to the sea floor, lying face down, bear hugging his 6’10 custom Mark Richard’s thruster to protect it from damage. Within seconds the waterspout’s wall smashed into him, shuddering his whole body and sand blasting his skin like an industrial gurney. He somehow held on to his board but was left spluttering with a mouth full of waterspout milkshake.

He was now inside the eye of the waterspout, a cavern, seven metres in diameter. He expected it to be a wind tunnel, angry and ferocious. Amazingly, it was the complete opposite… so calm, so surreal. He thought he had found heaven’s gates, blinded by a light from above. The air was still and the water surface calm, littered with small branches and leaves. In total contrast, the watery walls of muck continued to swirl around him but the howling cats had disappeared, reduced to a whirring whistle.

He was lured into a false sense of security, expecting angels to appear. Instead, he was welcomed by hell’s fury. He braced himself for the exit out the back wall, hoping not to be done over like a donut in a dishwasher. The force shocked him, immediately unprising his vice-like grip on the board, sucking it up vertically into the twisting wall. The exodus was not so kind. Damo (6′ 4″) was slam dunked and tossed about mercilessly, repeatedly jolting his 105 kg frame.

Damian Pears enjoying life on the other side of the whirlwind he was literally swept up in.

Eventually, the board, followed by Damo, were spat out the back- stunned but alive!

On the beach, a mullet fisherman had witnessed everything from the safety of his 1975 Toyota Landcruiser. He had been weaving down the beach trying to photograph the uncompliant waterspout. He quickly waded out to Damo to see it he was all right. Mate, you don’t look good! Damo’s right shoulder was hanging in agony. Dazed, nauseous and in shock, Damo’s only worry, Is my board ok? The Mark Richards had survived pretty much unscathed; however, he was not in a good way. The mullet fisherman helped Damo out of the water into the 4WD where the heater was cranked up and Damo was hunched over in pain. Forty-five minutes later an ambulance arrived.

In the ambulance, Damo sucked the inside-out of a green whistle to dull the pain before arriving at the local Nelson Bay Community Hospital. A young nurse arrived with a pair of scissors to cut off his wet suit. There was a blatant no way from Damo. No surfer is going to part with their trusty wetsuit if they can help it. Taking it off he endured more pain, but hey the wetsuit would surf another day. The scan results were inconclusive and the injury uncertain. He left with his arm in a sling, pain killers and a referral for an MRI scan.

Despite pleading with the ambulance officers to take his board with him, it remained with the mullet fisherman. The following day he found the mullet fish- erman, collected his board and gave his rescuer a carton for his help.

Damo’s pain was worsening, so the holiday was cut short. He, his wife and son dashed home at midnight to Brisbane. Without any doubt, he knew something was seriously wrong with his shoulder. By early morning, a black and blue bruise the size of a large dinner plate had formed under his arm pit on his rib cage. He visited his physio who gave him the bad news, you’ve ripped your pectoralis major muscle and tendon from your shoulder, an uncommon injury usually associated with weightlifters.

The following day he had a two-hour operation, a medical priority given the severity of his injury. The operation involved a hole being drilled in his upper arm bone and the tendon fed through and tied off.

Rehab was long and painful. Damo was off work for six months. The first three months he was told not to move his shoulder. This was followed by four months of intensive physio.

Turns out, Damo’s love for his Mark Richards ended up causing his injury. When first hit, the spinning direction pushed the board towards his body where he managed to control it. However, out the ‘back door’ the spinning direction and centrifugal force fiercely pulled away from Damo. This reefed the board and his arm upwards towards the sky, hyperextending and rupturing his pectoralis major. Then his board became a missile, and it was sheer luck that they did not collide at some point.

Damo eventually bounced back returning to surfing that year. Today, he has traded the Mark Richards for a Friar Tuck knee-board. Even though he has surfed around the world (Morocco, Spain, Portugal, France and Ireland), it is the waterspout encounter that sticks most vividly in his mind, a brush with Mother Nature that he will remember for a lifetime. He realises that the chance of this happening statistically, is like winning Gold Lotto. His wife’s words continue to resonate within him It could only ever happen to you, Damo!

***

The Captain Goodvibes’ collectors edition is on stands now, available to purchase online or click here to subscribe and read all of Tracks premium content!

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