The way Andrew Knowles describes it, his life changed in the time it takes to sneeze.
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Riding his motorcycle home from work in Warrnambool in July, 2011, Mr Knowles was hit at a roundabout – a crash that has shaped his past five years.
“I got partway through the roundabout and I got T-boned by a ute with a bullbar,” Mr Knowles said.
“I can just remember my left leg disappearing between the fairing of the bike and the uprights of the bullbar.
“The next minute I was thrown from the bike. I actually ended up on the other side of the roundabout in the gutter. The only part of the accident and all my treatment that I don’t remember is the amount of time it takes to sneeze – basically the initial impact – that was it. I can remember being on the ground, being transported, the whole bit.”
Mr Knowles was stabilised in Warrnambool before being transported by air to The Alfred.
“I ended up cracking the vertebrae in my neck, a dislocated left hip, damage to my left knee, severely damaged both bones between the knee and the ankle and fully rotating the left ankle,” he said.
“I went straight into trauma and I think it was after four or five hours of them trying to piece me back together again.”
Mr Knowles had an external fixation placed on his shattered leg to help the bones heal correctly. The following weeks brought with them six more operations. Mr Knowles finally returned home three days before Christmas.
His left leg is now considerably shorter than his right, making everyday tasks a challenging balancing act. He has learnt to walk again, but his hopes of a longer-term fix have been dampened after a surgeon told him this week that a further operation could pose more risks than benefits.
“He basically said that we can do the operation, but because your body has adapted to the way you are it might actually cause nerve damage, muscle damage, further bone damage, discomfort, everything like that.
“At the moment I’m basically short in my left-hand side. I use arm crutches to get myself around on, I’m still attending rehab therapy twice a week.”
Mr Knowles is now a speaker with Road Trauma Support Services Victoria, helping to educate traffic offenders. He said many drivers don’t realise how vulnerable motorcycle riders are on the road.
“One of the things I do say is I actually recommend for people when they’re going for their licence to go get their motorcycle licence. When you go for a bike licence, even on your Ls, you haven’t got the person sitting beside you, you’ve got to make the decisions, you’ve got to make the right ones,” he said.
“When you’re on a bike you haven’t got the protection around you. You’ve got to make that right decision otherwise there’s not much there to save you.”
Volunteering with the group at first stirred up many buried emotions.
“At one of my try-out sessions with the local co-ordinator I actually broke down, I was talking about something in my story that triggered a memory I just couldn’t control.
“(But) I’ve got to the point now where I can pick all the points that I’d never thought about before. And I can deal with it. I dealt with all the major bits – the pain, the accident, the operations, the travel, the frustrations – it was just all the little bits that got to me.”
Mr Knowles said his focus now was trying to get “some normality back into life”.
He worked at Lyndoch for 25 years. It was a job he loved but one he had to give away because of his injuries.
“Trying to find work, not having a piece of paper to say that I’m qualified at something, has made it really hard. The jobs that I know I can do, they go ‘no, you can’t do it’.
“Outside of work I’ve also had a career as a volunteer firefighter. I’ve done 17 or 18 years as a firefighter but the last five of them I can’t go anywhere near a fire, I can’t even train.”
Mr Knowles is a member of the Red Knights Motorcycle Club – made up of firefighters.
As a passionate motorcycle rider for two decades, he dreams of one day getting back on the bike.
“I do miss it.
“I’ve got in contact with disability associations and what they’ve done and what is available,” he said of modifying a bike to his needs.
Mr Knowles’ confidence these days are a far cry from immediately following the crash, when he was reluctant to leave his own home.
“I still get some stares because I still wear shorts all year round, I’ve got one sock on (covering the damaged leg), one sock off and people look at me a bit strange. I just ignore it now, where as one stage I used to fear going out the front door. I had to be physically pushed out the door to go places,” he said.
“Once I had that push I went out there and did what had to be done.”
Mr Knowles said the accident had made him more determined.
“I could have been dead in 2011,” he said.
“I used to say ‘I’d like to do that’, whereas now I say ‘I’m going to do that’.”
