Trees 'give birth to car' after fearful crash at Leongatha South
NEARBY residents at Leongatha South, on the Bass Highway, report hearing a loud bang last Wednesday night, at about 9.45pm, but when they came outside to investigate, they couldn’t see anything, at first. The driver of a late model, electric blue...
NEARBY residents at Leongatha South, on the Bass Highway, report hearing a loud bang last Wednesday night, at about 9.45pm, but when they came outside to investigate, they couldn’t see anything, at first.
The driver of a late model, electric blue Toyota Camry Altise hatch had mounted the embankment across the road, flipped the car and buried it deep in a stand of roadside trees, some Cypress, some eucalypt, with the car coming to rest, almost upside-down against the trees.
All you could see, on closer inspection, was a flash of blue from the car’s roof, but nothing more.
Miraculously, the driver, the only occupant of the car, reportedly got out with barely a scratch, although even that must have been an ordeal with the car stuck in the middle of several trees, almost on its roof.
Although the accident scene was inspected by police, the car could not be recovered until Thursday evening, around 6pm, when Travis Effern of Greg’s Panels in Wonthaggi arrived with a tray tow truck, two police vehicles and officers to take charge of traffic on the Bass Highway, 600 metres north of the intersection with the Leongatha South-Outtrim Road.
Together with a mate, Effern hooked the front of the car to the truck’s winch and applied plenty of pressure. At first the car wouldn’t budge, stuck behind a huge gum tree, but with a grind of metal and a scrape of bark, the front of the car started to emerge from the middle of the bush.
“It looks like a tree trying to give birth to a car,” said a bystander.
The recovery crew finally managed to pull the car from its bushy grave and flip it back on to its wheels in one fluid motion while police managed to keep at least one lane of the highway open for all but a couple of minutes of the main recovery effort.
A quick brush with the broom and they were gone.
The response to a video being posted on Facebook has been similar to those from local residents: “Escaped without injury? How?”
Check it out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpGmpLbij8
