I Hit a Kangaroo at 100km/h. Then We Went to Mount Gambier Anyway.

"Oh I wish you hadn't told me that," said my mum.

She said it the day I told her I was getting my motorcycle license. I thought I knew the risks. I’d ridden dirt bikes as a kid, spent years cycling the hills around Adelaide. How different could it be?

Different enough, as it turned out.

I bought a Suzuki GS500. Simple motorcycle. Carburettor engine, no ABS, no bells or whistles. Exactly what a first bike should be.

What it gave me wasn’t something I’d expected though. Riding a motorcycle isn’t like looking at the world through a car window you’re outside the window. The wind from a truck blasting past on the highway. The particular kind of present-ness that sets in after a few hours on an open road. The first time I rode solo to Mount Gambier I understood what all my friends had been talking about.

I was hooked.

A few months later my mate Stewart and I decided to do the trip together.

We’d agreed to meet at the end of Glen Osmond Road at seven in the morning. By eight he was calling to say he’d overslept. So had I.

Before we left I’d seen on the news that the Riddoch Highway was closed — a crash involving a truck. We’d take the coastal route instead. The Princess Highway.

We stopped at a bakery somewhere along the way, got fuel, and kept going.

It started bucketing down not long after. We pulled over, put on the wet weather gear, and continued.

We were about forty kilometres out of Kingston our next stop, roughly halfway when I saw it.

A flash of grey.

I was doing a hundred kilometres an hour and it took a moment for my brain to catch up. By the time I registered it was a kangaroo, it had already started to move.

The beautiful thing about these moments is there’s no time to question your choices. Over the comms, Stewart heard my voice from fifty minutes ahead.

Oh fuck.

Kind of fitting, really, that those could have been my last words.

There was nothing to do except hold on, brace, and hope.

I hit the kangaroo.

The next moment I was airborne. Then I wasn’t. I landed on my back and I was sliding down the highway.

I’m alive. I’m alive.

That was the only thought. My motorcycle slid past me.

“oh shit, did you crash? try get to the side of the road” said stewart over the comms, while stopping to turn around.

I crawled to the side of the road. A car that had been behind me pulled up fast. The driver was already dialling triple zero. I told them I was fine, though I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible.

I took off my helmet probably not the smartest move and looked down over my body. Not a single cut. Not a single abrasion.

What a good day to be wearing kevlar jeans.

The wet weather gear had been completely ripped off me. I looked down at my RM Williams. Scuffed in a way they hadn’t been an hour earlier. A story they’d tell forever.

I figured I should call my family.

Hello. I’m okay. But I’ve had a crash I’ve hit a kangaroo.

Mum’s a nurse. She’s used to receiving bad news. I’m not sure that made the call any easier.

I tried my dad next. No answer. He was probably still on his bike, on his way to meet us in Kingston.

I sat on the side of the highway and waited.

Then I saw it. A red Harley Davidson coming down the road.

I’ve thought about that moment a lot since. My dad riding toward a crash scene, not yet knowing what he was going to find. I can only imagine what was going through his mind in those seconds before I raised my hand and waved.

He pulled over. Didn’t say much. Some things just put it in perspective.

People stopped to help. Someone moved the bike off the road. The kangaroo didn’t make it a few of the people who’d stopped took care of that quietly, without any fuss.

Then a man pulled up in a ute with a dog in the back and offered to load the bike up and take it through to Mount Gambier.

"I could give you a lift as well," he said. "But I’ve got my dog."

No problem. My ride was already on its way.

The ambulance took me to what was essentially an aged care facility in Meningie. Stewart and my dad rode in behind it.

Thank god you’re okay, said Stewart.

The doctors ran their observations. Somehow I was fine a few torn ligaments in my shoulder and leg, sore in a way I’d feel properly over the coming weeks, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. My keys, however, where on their way to Mt Gambier in the back of a stranger’s ute and I was a long way from anywhere.

Stewart said he’d ride back to Adelaide, grab his car, and come back for me. That’s a two to three hour ride, followed by the same drive in return.

Stewart and I had worked together as software engineers for a few years by that point. The kind of person who doesn’t say much when something goes wrong he just figures out what needs doing and does it.

I sat in the waiting room of a country aged care facility and waited.

He arrived around six in the evening. When I got in the car, much to my suprise he said

So. we’re going to Mount Gambier?

We headed off in his Ford Falcon and grabbed some dinner and made an attempt to change a headlight then headed back out onto the Princess Highway. The same road, now dark, the headlights doing their best against it.

We made it.

The long weekend went by quickly. My motorcycle was at my dad’s place when we arrived. Walking around it was a strange moment the kind that makes the whole thing land properly. Looking at the damage and quietly taking stock of what I’d walked away from.

Getting back on a motorcycle after something like that, the advice is always the same do it quickly, before the hesitation takes hold. I took a few weeks of physio first, worked through the shoulder and the leg, and somewhere in the process found myself actually exercising properly for the first time in a while. One unexpected thing leading to another.

Then I bought a CBR500 and rode off like nothing had ever happened.

There wasn’t much hesitation, if I’m honest. I knew what happened was dumb luck. A kangaroo, a wet road, a Saturday morning on the Princess Highway. Nothing I could have seen coming, nothing I could have done differently. You can know the risks of riding a motorcycle without being able to predict a flash of grey at a hundred kilometres an hour.

That said highway speeds feel different now. They should. Knowing what it feels like to come off at that kind of speed, knowing you might not be that lucky next time, has a way of staying with you.

Not enough to stop. Just enough to remember.

A few days later, back in Adelaide, Stewart and I went to the RM Williams sale.

I looked at the boots. Thought about it.

Mine still had a few more trips left in them.

I’ve ridden back to Mount Gambier plenty of times since. Just never along the Princess Highway. I’m just not that game.