Against the Odds: Surviving the world's worst tsunami and overcoming trauma
Over60 spoke with prolific author John Maddocks about his book Against The Odds.
What exactly is Against the Odds about? Well, on Boxing Day, 2004 I was smashed by the Indian Ocean tsunami in southern Sri Lanka. I survived - I'm not entirely sure how - but the resort I was staying at and others nearby were destroyed. In fact, thousands of people died all around me in what turned out to be the worst hit part of Sri Lanka. There was nuclear-level destruction right across the area. The disaster was sudden, violent, catastrophic.
Getting out of there was a challenge, but when I managed to return home, I was haunted by apocalyptic dreams and terrifying memories. The whole event kept running through my mind like a movie on a loop. I didn't know it, but I had classic symptoms of severe traumatic stress.
Luckily, a friend mentioned a trauma psychologist who had treated Thredbo landslide survivor Stuart Diver, and seeing him became the first step in a race to avoid PTSD that involved using approaches at the cutting edge of neuropsychology.
I'm a travel writer, so there's nothing I love more than heading off on new adventures. But sometimes travel can go horribly wrong. In my case it meant facing the immediate, unexpected prospect of sudden death. But despite that, surviving against the odds, overcoming trauma and living on borrowed time has turned out to be liberating and exciting. 'Against the Odds' is available on Amazon and Smashwords as an ebook or in print at Booktopia, Fishpond, Angus and Robertson or The Mosh Shop.
You can also listen to the ABC Radio Nightlife program interview I did.
The following is a harrowing extract from "Against the Odds: Surviving the world's worst tsunami and overcoming trauma".
Miriam and Preethi were the owners of Mangrove Garden in Tangalle, Sri Lanka, where we were staying.
I walk out of our cabana into the quiet pre-dawn of Boxing Day. Low lighting spread throughout the gardens allows me to distinguish the outlines of the other cabana rooms and the new two-storey building workers have been rushing to complete over the last few days. It is due to be occupied by tourists for the first time tomorrow.
The sky is clear and there is no wind. As I walk on the sand I see a lone fisherman strolling along the edge of the lagoon near the point where water sometimes overflows down the beach.
The sunrise is as spectacular as Miriam described. Colours change from red to gold as the sun’s orb slowly rises above the horizon, enlivening the colours of the sand and the trees.
I walk further to photograph a small fishing boat that has been pulled up onto the beach. A European man passes me on the beach, stopping occasionally to pick up shells. A local dog appears from behind some coconut trees and straggles behind him. Waves lap the shore and the ocean seems to be calmer than usual.
When the sun is well above the ocean I return to the resort and notice that the light is perfect for photographing the restaurant, which is attractive because of its thatched roof and open design. Half-a-dozen tables and chairs are spread along the front and there is a bar in the corner. Timber panelling conceals the kitchen at the rear of the building.
While composing the photo I am delighted to see a squirrel dart across the roof. The sun behind me is still so low that I have to avoid my shadow creeping into the foreground. As I take the shot, I have no way of knowing that in exactly two hours both the restaurant and my camera will be destroyed.
As it is approaching 8 am, I sit in the restaurant and order a pot of tea. One of the young male staff members is cleaning the tables. He looks tired from staying up all night at the wake for his uncle who died several days earlier.
The temperature is already in the 30s. Miriam walks past the restaurant on her way to the beach, and we exchange greetings. I ask for another cup and saucer and take tea back to Cheryl in our room. The sun is highlighting the orange bagged-brick of our cabana and even the corrugated asbestos roof appears brighter in the early morning light.
Inside there is a timber-lined 5-metre-high cathedral ceiling. The bed is a queen-sized polished concrete base 60 centimetres high with a latex mattress on top.
While walking to the cabana I have no idea how significant the design, building materials and position of our room will be to my survival that day.
I wake Cheryl and give her the tea. Then I lie down on the bed and fall asleep.
“John, wake up! Wake up!” Cheryl shouts. “Something terrible is happening!”
She is already out of bed and rushing to the window. The extreme urgency in her voice jolts me out of my deep tropical sleep and into full consciousness in seconds. I hear a roaring, rumbling, hissing sound outside that is as loud as a low-flying jet plane.
As I reach the window I see water half-a-metre-deep tearing across the ground in front of our building. One of the boys on the staff is running frantically in front of it.
“We have to get out of here,” Cheryl screams above the noise as she opens the door of our room. “I’m going!”
We have seconds in which to make vital decisions. There is no time to deliberate.
“No, no! Don’t go outside! Shut the door!” I shout back and Cheryl slams the door closed.
Now the water of a second wave is up to our windowsill and is pouring in under the door. Thinking that perhaps this is as high as the water will reach, I try to close the window. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse a massive, 10-metre-high wall of water. A surge of gut-wrenching, fear-induced adrenaline races through my body.
“Quick, get on the bed, get on the bed,” I shout above the deafening roar of water.
We jump onto the bed, which is the highest point in the room. As we turn to face the front window, the glass smashes in and the window frames break away. The door of our room is snapped off its hinges by the enormous pressure of the water, then flicks up onto a torrent and comes flying towards us. I deflect it with my shoulder just as the mass of water slams me against the back wall and knocks Cheryl off the bed.
Cheryl has her eyes open under water and looks out through the space where the front window used to be. Strangely, the water is perfectly clear and she sees trees and building debris racing past.
As Cheryl surfaces she screams “We are going to die! We are going to die!” I have never heard this chilling tone in her voice before.
“We are not going to die!” I yell, trying to overcome my feeling of terror.
Cheryl can barely swim, so I grab her as the torrent surges higher and try to keep her head above the water. I push off the bed towards the ceiling, holding Cheryl up in front of me. When I surface we are less than 30 centimetres from the apex of the cathedral ceiling and the water is still rising. I can’t avoid gulping down some seawater as I struggle to keep us both afloat.
“Please, please – no more! No more!” Cheryl gasps. She knows at that moment that this is how her life will end. She remembers reading that drowning is a pleasant way to die. She even visualises her floating body being retrieved later and identified by our children.
“We are NOT going to die!” I shout again. “It’s not my karma to die now!”
For some reason I don’t think about dying throughout the disaster. Pumped with adrenaline, I focus entirely on survival. The tsunami is so powerful, and the situation so fast moving and chaotic that I lose any sense of self. I am simply acting on instinctive, primal responses to fear that must be embedded in the human nervous system. But some recess of my mind seems to be ice cold, diamond hard.
I desperately try to keep our heads above the ocean swirling in our room. I think that if it gets any higher I will try to swim out the window underwater with Cheryl.
Time slows. We cling to each other near the ceiling for what seems like long minutes. We wait for the inevitable surge of water that will fill this air pocket and drown us. At any moment the cabana could collapse and bury us under tons of bricks and timber.
But miraculously the water doesn’t rise further. It subsides slightly and I grab the latex mattress that has floated up. We hang onto it as we swirl around. The door, a cupboard and a travel bag are whirling around the room with us. Then the water subsides a little more and, shortly afterwards, all the water drains out of the room in a rush and we are on the floor.
We look at each other, dazed. We are surrounded by a soggy mattress, some broken cane furniture and a few items that have been dislodged from our open bags. I notice my medical kit in its distinctive green and purple container. The door of the room is lodged on the concrete bed base but all the windows, including the frames, have gone completely, torn out by the force of the water.
The roof of the building gives a threatening creak, as if it’s about to cave in on top of us. I follow Cheryl quickly out the door onto our veranda. The steps have been washed away and the veranda roof is leaning at a sharp angle, as if poised to drop. I look down the veranda to the room adjoining ours, but instead of seeing bricks I look through a cavernous space where the end wall had been and see the receded sea in the distance. Then I notice that the restaurant, which had been in front of and to the left of our building, has gone. The only indication that it had ever existed is a concrete slab.
I glance towards a nearby cabana built in line with ours and some 20 metres away. A concrete slab and some ornate concrete veranda posts lie where the building had been. A middle aged German man has been staying there and I briefly wonder what has happened to him.
As I try to comprehend the level of devastation I turn towards the lagoon at the rear of the property and see that the small ayurvedic clinic behind our cabana is also gone. But further back a new two-storey brick building, which was completed only a few days ago, is still standing. The bottom has been gutted, with the doors and windows gone, but there are half-a-dozen young guys who work at Mangrove Garden on the roof. God know how they got up there.
I take a welcome piss off the end of the veranda. My heart is thumping in my ears and I have a lifetime’s worth of adrenaline pumping through my body. As I’m urinating I hear someone calling to me, and look up to see Preethi sliding down a tall coconut tree behind our cabana. The tree is 15 metres high, but he is wet and has lost the sarong he usually wears around his waist. As Preethi reaches the bottom dressed only in his shirt and underwear he looks at me and asks “how are you still alive? The water went metres over the roof of your room.”
“If I’d known the fucking waves were so big here I would have brought my surfboard,” I tell him.
“What was it? What was it that happened?” he asks in disbelief.
“It’s called a tsunami,” I say. “We all have to get out of here now, because it could come again.”
Preethi is in shock, having just watched the destruction of nearly everything he has worked for in the last five years. I don’t know it then, but when Preethi was clinging to the top of the coconut tree for dear life he watched two of the resort staff get washed into the lagoon and then swirled out the lagoon mouth into the Indian Ocean.