Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Gadigall people of
Speaker 1: the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: Hi and here, I'm taking a Christmas break and we'll
Speaker 2: be back with more head Game stories on the twenty
Speaker 2: second of January. I thought this would be a great
Speaker 2: chance to take a look back at some of the
Speaker 2: amazing stories we heard last year. In this episode, you're
Speaker 2: here from three people who fought their lives, were heading
Speaker 2: in one direction and then one day changed it all
Speaker 2: for them. Firstly, you're here from comedian Simon Kennedy, who
Speaker 2: received a devastating call in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So two thousand and one. So I was living with
Speaker 4: my girlfriend who is now my wife. I'd gone to bed.
Speaker 4: It was late and it was tennish at night and
Speaker 4: I I think I'd had a few drinks. I'd hit
Speaker 4: the hay. Then my phone rang and my wife she said,
Speaker 4: answer your phone. I went, I don't want to go
Speaker 4: to im and go to sleep. She goes, it's your
Speaker 4: brother calling.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: And he was calling from London. He lived in London.
Speaker 4: He didn't ring very often. It was very rare. Maybe
Speaker 4: on my birthday that'd be it. But I didn't want
Speaker 4: to answer the phone. But my wife made me. She
Speaker 4: made me answer.
Speaker 5: She has come on.
Speaker 4: I picked up the phone and I was pretty drowsy,
Speaker 4: and he said, hey, there have you been watching the news?
Speaker 4: I went, no, No, I've gone to bed. He goes,
Speaker 4: there's some stuff going on in America. There's some planes
Speaker 4: have hit some buildings, and I'm just a bit worried
Speaker 4: about mum because she's on holidays over there. Mum had
Speaker 4: gone on a bit of a retirement trip through the
Speaker 4: US and Canada and all that sort of thing, so
Speaker 4: she was over there. I'm always a bit like, oh, god,
Speaker 4: like seriously, like, what are the odds in a country
Speaker 4: of three hundred million people and you expect that our
Speaker 4: mum's caught up in something like that?
Speaker 2: But anyway, is that what went through your head? What
Speaker 2: are the odds?
Speaker 4: And you were just like yeah, like I mean, honestly,
Speaker 4: I mean, logically speaking, I'm like, come on, I'm like, really,
Speaker 4: I want to go to sleep here. But my wife said, oh,
Speaker 4: come on, let's this is serious. I said, yeah, Well,
Speaker 4: I'd seen my mum a few weeks before the day
Speaker 4: before she left, and she handed me her itinerary, which
Speaker 4: she would always do. She was very prepared, worst case scenario.
Speaker 4: She was on top of it all. She had all
Speaker 4: all that going on. So she gave me her itinerary and.
Speaker 2: It was weird.
Speaker 4: It was weird because she always she had a dark
Speaker 4: sense of humor her self. I said, she gave it
Speaker 4: to me, and she said, what, I don't need this.
Speaker 4: She said, oh, no, it's just in case the terrorists
Speaker 4: kept me or something. And that was the kind of
Speaker 4: dark humor she had. I went to the itinerary, I
Speaker 4: checked out where mum was supposed to be at that
Speaker 4: particular time. I told my brother, I said, looks like
Speaker 4: she's leaving Washington on American Airlines flight seventy seven. I
Speaker 4: remember the silence and the moment is there. He said,
Speaker 4: I think that's one of them. And then I just
Speaker 4: went and turned on the TV and we had a
Speaker 4: look at what was going on, and yeah, they started
Speaker 4: reporting on flight seventy seven having hit the Pentagon and
Speaker 4: that started the rest of my life. And it was
Speaker 4: it was a long It was a long night.
Speaker 2: My next guest is Sam Bloom. Sam was in Thailand
Speaker 2: with her husband and three sons when their family holiday
Speaker 2: soon became a nightmare.
Speaker 5: On our second day, we'd been swimming, and we'd actually
Speaker 5: planned to hire bikes and ride up to a fishing
Speaker 5: village which was about two kilometers away. And so beforehand,
Speaker 5: one of the kids, we'd had breakfast, and then the
Speaker 5: boys got a juice and one of the kids saw
Speaker 5: like a staircase going up onto this big flat rooftop.
Speaker 5: And so three years go up there and check out
Speaker 5: the view, drink our juices before we go riding, and so, yeah,
Speaker 5: we went up the stairs. And I actually don't have
Speaker 5: any memory of even going up the stairs. And apparently
Speaker 5: I learned on the railing and it had dry right,
Speaker 5: but I didn't realize. So I leant for it obviously
Speaker 5: backwards and fell six meters and yeah, broke my back
Speaker 5: and sustained numerous other injuries. That was our fourth day
Speaker 5: of our holiday.
Speaker 2: Fourth day of your holiday. Everything's going well. The kids
Speaker 2: are loving it, You're loving it. The children are up there.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: So the children do they witness you for six meters
Speaker 2: onto the ground?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they saw, Well, a couple of them just saw
Speaker 5: my feet go over and then they heard the crashing case.
Speaker 5: It was like a metal railing and then so yeah,
Speaker 5: they all ran down, and yeah it was horrific. I mean,
Speaker 5: I obviously knocked myself out. I freshened my skull, so
Speaker 5: I was like bleeding from my head and oh, I'd
Speaker 5: bit through my tongue so there was blood coming out
Speaker 5: of my mouth. Yeah. Yeah, I was just lying there
Speaker 5: unconscious and gurgling because I had a lot of internal
Speaker 5: bleeding in my lungs and stuff just from the force
Speaker 5: of falling. So yeah, it was It was horrible because
Speaker 5: you know, it's pretty horrific to like run down the
Speaker 5: stairs and then see your mom like lying unconscious bleeding.
Speaker 2: Especially when you're going from one extreme to the other.
Speaker 2: You know, you're havingough time of your life and and
Speaker 2: and then that literally gets flipped upside down from having
Speaker 2: you know, all smiles, laughing and loving life to life's
Speaker 2: going to change from this moment onwards.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it split second everything changed. Yeah, So no,
Speaker 5: it was terrible. So then Cam rolled me over because
Speaker 5: I landed on my back and that's how I hit
Speaker 5: my head as well. And then he rolled me over
Speaker 5: and he saw this massive lump on my back and
Speaker 5: he started yelling for an ambulance, and yeah, it was horrible.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't remember it, but it must have been. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it would have been horrific for the kids.
Speaker 2: And Cam absolutely. What was your if you don't mind
Speaker 2: talking about, what's your first memory of realizing that you'd
Speaker 2: been in an accident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, my first memory was probably two days after
Speaker 5: and my mom and my sister had come to Thailand
Speaker 5: to see me, and so at first after the accident,
Speaker 5: I was taken just to a little regional hospital and
Speaker 5: they were trying to stitch out my head and X
Speaker 5: ray me, and they're kind of like, yeah, it's not
Speaker 5: looking good, and so they put us all in an
Speaker 5: ambulance and drove us another three hours up to a
Speaker 5: private hospital.
Speaker 2: And you can't remember any of this, man, I don't.
Speaker 5: Remember, no, not one. But I know, well, I was conscious.
Speaker 5: Apparently I was saying to Cam, I can't feel my legs,
Speaker 5: but I don't remember that. And so, yeah, it would
Speaker 5: have been a couple of days after the accident and
Speaker 5: I woke up. I remember seeing my mom and sister
Speaker 5: there and I'm like, what are you guys doing here?
Speaker 5: And then I remember saying to Mom, I want to
Speaker 5: get up. I want to get up because I was
Speaker 5: strapped to a spider board and I must have had
Speaker 5: this strap over my chest and I remember saying to Mom,
Speaker 5: you know, it's hurting my boobs. It's hurting my boobs,
Speaker 5: or want to get up. Then that's all I remember then.
Speaker 5: And it's funny because my second memory, I was in theater,
Speaker 5: but I didn't know I was in theater. I had
Speaker 5: no idea what was going on. And I remember them
Speaker 5: pulling up my T shirt besu. I had this aqua
Speaker 5: T shirt, was quite a bright T shirt on and
Speaker 5: I remember them pulling it up and then cut it
Speaker 5: off and then I stuck like a central line or
Speaker 5: something in my neck and that really hurt. And I
Speaker 5: remember just gripping onto the sheet and then you just
Speaker 5: see the mask come down, and yeah, that's my next memory.
Speaker 5: But I had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 2: When did the reality of what the hell is going on?
Speaker 2: When did that kick in? And did you freak out?
Speaker 2: And what was what was going on?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: Actually, you know that's the weirdest thing. I don't actually
Speaker 5: think I realized that I couldn't walk mate, not so
Speaker 5: I got home from from Thailand.
Speaker 2: So they didn't tell you that you were paralyzed.
Speaker 5: No, Well, initially my main focus was actually on my
Speaker 5: head because I had like subdural extra pabo timers, so
Speaker 5: I like the most insane headaches, and that was kind
Speaker 5: of all I could think about. And to be honest,
Speaker 5: I remember that the nurses would often come in and
Speaker 5: just inject I don't know, some sort of painkiller, and
Speaker 5: I was pretty out of it a lot of the time.
Speaker 5: And I remember my best friend she also flew out
Speaker 5: to Thailand, and yeah, I remember seeing her bursting into tears.
Speaker 5: But then it was just so it's so incredible, like
Speaker 5: how your your brain can just like just erase y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, yes, phenomenal, wasn't it. But when when
Speaker 2: did the news hit And how long were you in
Speaker 2: Thailand for before you got flown home?
Speaker 5: Well? I was in Thailand for about three weeks.
Speaker 2: You in Thailand for three weeks and no one told
Speaker 2: you that you were paralyzed.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: My final guest is Nigel Brennan. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: Nigel was working as a photojournalist along with his colleague
Speaker 2: Amanda Lindhaut. They were hoping to capture the unfolding humanitarian
Speaker 2: crisis in Somalia. It was a risky trip and their
Speaker 2: planned seven day visit turned into a hellish four hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty two days in captivity.
Speaker 3: We jump in our vehicle, we take off, We get
Speaker 3: to basically the outskirts of Mogadishi where the Mogadishu University is.
Speaker 3: You've got Africa Union troops that are stationed there. You
Speaker 3: can see all the sandbags and guys behind machine guns
Speaker 3: and those sorts of things. The car stops and a
Speaker 3: security detail that are in the vehicle. Basically we're told
Speaker 3: pretty much at that point that they have to leave
Speaker 3: us and we now have to travel five kilometers without
Speaker 3: security detail until we pick up our next security detail.
Speaker 2: Did that not raise alarm bell?
Speaker 3: Absolutely do.
Speaker 2: So there's there's an inside job going on right there
Speaker 2: or something along those way. Yes, because you get your
Speaker 2: security detail. The idea is that they stay with you,
Speaker 2: stay with you on the boots on the ground.
Speaker 3: Well, it was explained to us that because they were
Speaker 3: seen as government forces, they can't travel into a militia
Speaker 3: run area, so that they would basically be stationed there.
Speaker 3: They would wait until we've come back from the day
Speaker 3: and we'd pick them up. So again, like you know,
Speaker 3: having done hostile environment training, we say, if the plan changes,
Speaker 3: you basically need to stop what you're doing, think about
Speaker 3: the consequences, think about the risks, and if it's too risky,
Speaker 3: you go home and have a cup of tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the flags basically yeah, Yeah, So.
Speaker 3: Amanda and I had a really quick conversation. We were like,
Speaker 3: you know, we've come all this way, we really want
Speaker 3: to get this story. And we made the decision that
Speaker 3: we punched through.
Speaker 2: And is that because you've been getting excuse my friend
Speaker 2: ship stories before and you're like, this is the first
Speaker 2: meeting one we're going to get. This is the first
Speaker 2: one that we're going to Yeah, I think really sink
Speaker 2: our teeth into.
Speaker 3: For the first three days, it was this sort of
Speaker 3: fed stuff that that was sort of I think, look,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Almost just pleasing you with little little things.
Speaker 3: You know, to keep us busy while while a juice
Speaker 3: was working with the nat Ja guys getting the stuff
Speaker 3: that we were sort of hoping or wanting to get
Speaker 3: as well. So it's just like you guys just can
Speaker 3: have the scraps off the table we'll just keep you busy,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So the decision wasn't that hard. You were like, let's
Speaker 2: let's just go for it.
Speaker 3: We're here now, let's go made a decision. There's five
Speaker 3: of us in the car. We leave our security detail
Speaker 3: and we basically punched down the road. I'm mucking around
Speaker 3: with my camera, basically looking at the images I've taken
Speaker 3: from the day before, deleting images slowly, like so had
Speaker 3: all the shots from while I was with the African
Speaker 3: Union Forces. I can remember hearing Amanda and Abdar, who
Speaker 3: was our interpreter, sort of speaking by the stage. We
Speaker 3: created quite a good bond with Abdi. He was good fun,
Speaker 3: liked to laugh, and they were sort of singing and
Speaker 3: mucking around. And I can remember looking up over the
Speaker 3: driver's shoulder and seeing a car flashing at slights because
Speaker 3: we said they told us that we'd obviously intercept another
Speaker 3: security detail, and I just presumed that that was the
Speaker 3: car that was our security detail. Didn't really take much notice,
Speaker 3: went back to my camera, and then as we got
Speaker 3: to that car, we stopped, and then I sort of
Speaker 3: looked up and looked over my right shoulder and just
Speaker 3: saw a guy fully mask faced with an AK forty
Speaker 3: seven literally sort of inches away from the glass, and
Speaker 3: then the next thing that you know, aw, four doors
Speaker 3: are ripped open. I'm dragged out of the vehicle drive.
Speaker 3: The second the guy who's in the front seat with
Speaker 3: the driver, and then Abdin Amanda, who in the back
Speaker 3: world brought around to my side of the car, pushed
Speaker 3: face down into the dirt AK forty seven at the
Speaker 3: back of the head. Very quickly, all five of us
Speaker 3: are bundled into the back side of this slam cruiser.
Speaker 3: I've got this really big hostage taker who's now sitting
Speaker 3: beside us, so there's six of us in the back side.
Speaker 3: I've got Amanda on my lap. Two guys jump in
Speaker 3: the front, one's got a pistol pointing back, and then
Speaker 3: two young guys again masks face at the back who
Speaker 3: are pointing AK forty seven's at the back of our heads.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to hear the full interviews with Simon Kennedy,
Speaker 2: Nigel Brennan, and Sam Bloom, I linked them in the
Speaker 2: show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be
Speaker 2: back on the twenty second of January with more great
Speaker 2: stories in the meantime, take care and I'll see you
Speaker 2: in the next episode.