Wake up! Wake up! I hear a voice yelling at me, fading in and out of the sharp ringing in my ears. Man, my head hurts. I slowly crack my eyes open to see bright orange flames licking through the smashed windows. 

A voice is yelling desperately, “get out, get out man”. My head is spinning. Reaching down, I struggle to undo the belt holding me into the seat, but thankfully after a few attempts, I am free. I throw myself out the door and onto the ground just in time. A fuel tank and a naked flame are an incredibly explosive combo…the resulting explosion throws a fireball into the sky. 

I sense that someone from the plane has seemed to make it out as well. My eyes are blurred and head still spinning, but their presence is surprisingly calming, given the disaster that is occurring. 

I hear a thud behind me, “thud, thud, thud” as pieces of plane wreckage from the explosion crash down near us. “Run”, I hear this person yell at me. We both quickly drag ourselves away from what feels like a warzone and charge for the nearest tree with pieces of the aircraft falling all around us. Intense pain shooting wildly through my chest and shoulder, make it pretty clear that I’ve damaged myself rather significantly. 

Under the relative safety of the tree canopy, I turn around to see the propeller land where we were only seconds ago. I’m no medic, but know my collarbone and ribs are not happy at all, not to mention my head which is screaming and feels like it’s full of concrete. Heck, I’m hurting.

“That was close!” a familiar voice says behind me. 
I turn around to see a young man, standing slightly back in the trees, and facing towards the scene of destruction out beyond us. He looks quite calm, not at all like someone who has just escaped the clutches of death. I’m still panicked though. I feel like screaming. “Is there anyone else?”. “Nah, just you mate”, he says slowly. I look at him blankly, soaking up this news, and it occurs to me I have no idea who he is. I can’t remember his name or even his face from boarding the flight, but then again, I think my head was pretty badly knocked about on impact. Who knew you could hurt this badly?

What is very obvious, is that we are in quite a predicament. It is now blatantly clear to me that no-one else has survived the impact or subsequent explosion. It’s a bloody mess. 

Looking around, I gradually identify where we are. This ridgeline is very familiar. We have crashed very near Turner Saddle in Fiordland, I recognise Mount Tutoko standing proudly at the end of the valley and a distinctive rocky spire standing high on the ridgeline to the west of us. I have flown over this place hundreds of times before. I also know this isn’t where any possible search teams might venture to locate us. I’ve broken the golden rule and deviated from our flight plan, relenting to the urgings of my passengers for more photographic opportunities. Dumb mistake. It might cost me dearly. My passenger and I are going to have to get ourselves out of here…that much is clear to my foggy throbbing brain.

I’d woken to the sound of my alarm blaring this morning, I been rushing as had an early start at work. Thankfully it’s only a 10 min drive to the airport. I remember the radio announcing great weather for today. I was relieved as the small scenic flight company, I fly for had been hammered with bookings. 

Vroom… I started up the small fixed-wing for the first flight of the day, there were three passengers in the back all excited to get airborne. Rolling down the taxiway, I completed all the pre-flight checks and even mentioned the irritating rattling sound that I have been hearing recently with this older plane. At the end of the runway, I lined the plane up and eased on the throttle, the nimble plane leapt forwards, accelerating down the runway. I remember feeling the plane get lift and soar up into the sky leaving the ground below. I never get tired of that feeling. “The weather conditions are spectacular, so hopefully a smooth flight”, I announced to the passengers whose eyes were firmly fixed on the view out the window, as the ground dropped away below. 

About halfway through the flight, I heard that annoying rattling start to increase in frequency… until it became clearly apparent to me, and also to the passengers, that something was dreadfully wrong. The rattling intensified into a loud banging coming from the nose of the plane. Then the noise stopped! … Bang! 

Thick black smoke erupted out of the engine and the plane immediately began to plummet. The cabin shook as I tried to maintain control of the plane. I managed to lift the nose up enough to slow our descent into a steep glide, but the plane lost altitude quickly and was only just clearing the tops of the trees. The plane fell through the canopy with trees hitting the wings and windshield of the plane, spinning it out of control. Through the cracked windshield, I saw the ground rushing towards me, and…

“Gasp”, I seem to have collapsed and blacked out as am lying on the ground beside a tree trunk. I remember now… everything… no one will find us here, we’re well off the flight plan. This realisation feels like a heavyweight pinning me to the ground. I hurt…everywhere. I sense unconsciousness beckoning. “C’mon, we’ve got to get moving”…. It’s his voice again, more insistent this time. “Move yourself, we need to find to help”. 

I slowly get up and fossick through the debris littering the ground, body flinching as broken bones grate, and eventually locate a battered backpack that’s been flung from the plane on impact, and a drink bottle that has thankfully remained intact. Suddenly I’m dying of thirst and begin frantically taking huge gulps of water. My companion urges me to slow down, my body can’t handle drinking too much too fast. He reminds me that we also need to conserve what liquid we have; getting out of here might take a while. This is tough terrain.

Slowly and painfully we head off down the ridge towards Turner Saddle, with my friend leading the way I reckon our best chance of navigating our way out of here is to take the spur directly East down towards the Hollyford Valley. That’s where we were supposed to be flying, so a search crew would certainly be scouting that area. 

The terrain is unrelenting, and I’m exhausted. My head is really not working well, and every stumbling step sends stabs of pain throughout my entire torso. It just feels too much. I slump awkwardly to the ground, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I can’t sustain the pace. I just want to sleep. But time and again my companion’s voice snaps me back to reality. ‘Gotta keep moving. Small steps. Small steps’. His calm voice focuses me. 

Staggering on, I continue the descent. Over fallen logs, sliding several times as the earth gave way beneath me as we scaled down steep cliffs. The pain was draining, so draining. Step, focus, breathe. Step, focus breathe. Blurred vision really wasn’t helping me figure my way out of this mess. Many times I felt a cloud of darkness threaten to swamp me. More times than I can remember, I felt exhaustion pull me to the ground and a strong desire to curl up and drift off. Each and every time my companion urged me to keep going, telling me I couldn’t give up. He forced me to resist the temptation to stop and rest, I knew in my heart that he was right, my head had suffered a significant hit, and falling asleep now would likely have a deadly outcome. I felt so relieved to have this guy with me. How did he remain so calm and measured and focused on our escape from this place? Time and time again, he kept me on track, urging me along.

After what seemed like several eternities of stumbling and staggering, and a constant mantra of ‘step, focus, breathe’, I felt the terrain change. The bluffs and steep creeks we’d been descending simply stopped. We emerged from the steep bush-clad slope out onto a wide riverbed. The Hollyford River, we’d made it. This spot was easily visible from the air. 

As we lay there, out in the open…I heard the distinctive sound of a chopper coming down the valley. 

Maybe it was the relief, the idea that we were finally safe, or at least would soon be in the hands of search professionals. No longer having to face a fight for survival or that bloody Fiordland bush was an overwhelming feeling. Anyway, I must have passed out and came to as strong arms lifted me onto a stretcher. “Looks like you’ve had a bit of a tough time mate, hold tight, we have you”, came the reassuring voice of the Search and Rescue Team leader. 

The relief, the utter relief. I was so stoked that we’d been found. I turned my head in the stretcher to share my joy with my companion. I couldn’t get a view of him. “How’s my mate doing?, I mumbled, remembering that I didn’t know his name. “You’ve done a damn good job navigating yourself out of that terrain in your own in your condition”, The SAR leader commented. 

I was confused. Alone? Na, he had that wrong. Surely they had my companion strapped in a stretcher too, ready to get us both out of this river bed. I strained my head to look around…a chopper, two SAR team members…and me…on my own…in my stretcher. 

Where was he? He has been there, large as life. How could he just disappear? He’d been nagging me constantly, not to stop, not to give in to the exhaustion that had wrapped itself so tightly around my body. Everything he said, were things I knew to be true. The need to keep moving, the vital importance of not sleeping. The fact that no-one would find us off our flight path. 

Was it possible that he was in fact my own voice…demanding that I didn’t give up?