It’s Thursday lunch time when Hayden Blair calls me back from his bed at St George hospital in Sydney. It’s been two and a half days since Hayden hit the rocks, head-first, at Cape Solander, a wave he’d been surfing for twenty years without major incident. Hayden sounds equal parts rattled and relieved as he discusses a harrowing couple of days. He has finally been given the all-clear to move around after being forced to spend two long nights under strict orders to lie rigid on his back to avoid potential spinal damage. Meanwhile, the doctors plucked nuggets of rock and shell from his cranium. “They’re trying to decide whether to get ultrasounds and see if there are any more foreign bodies in there or let the foreign bodies push their way to the surface,” explains Hayden. As we speak his head is still throbbing (despite the heavy dosage of Endone) and he has a festering wound just below the knee, but mostly importantly he’s alive to tell that tale. Below Hayden recounts how it all went down on a heaving, east swell day at Cape Solander when he, Dean Jamieson, Kipp Caddy and Kurt Flintoff were the only surfers in the water, alongside a few bodyboarders.

Above: The sequence of Hayden’s mutant Solander slab. Photo: the Light by the Sea.

The Setting  

“It was big man that day we towed, it was big. Ten to fifteen foot easy. There were waves we let go… just because of the backwash and it was evil… the wind wasn’t too bad. It was more the wave eating itself and the backwash on that angle, the backwash is severe. When it’s that angle it’s some different, so much power in the surf…

The Ride

When I let go of the rope, I knew this thing was evil. Then I had to go over the backwash to set my line. The next minute it was just mutant, and I was trying to fight through it. The boys said I did pretty good. I got over the backwash and pulled into the barrel, and I was riding it, and then I think Kurt (watching from the channel) was saying it dropped out on me, like it stepped out inside the barrel again, and that’s where I got unstuck, because my line was really good. I thought I was going to make it, and then I kind of fell mid-face, which really just forced me straight over onto the bottom headfirst… I had no control of my body, because of the amount of force in that wave.

The Wipeout

I just remember hitting the bottom and going all limp… It felt like I hit and then got dragged, I must have, because I got cuts on my shin and like, little grazes everywhere… I don’t think I blacked out. I just went really limp and was kind of just floating, like I was floating on air… And then I kind of popped up as another wave hit… I had flotation on, the impact vest helped massively. So that was pushing to the top once the turbulence was gone… I went under, and I popped up, and then my my eyesight went on me… I’ve never felt like that before. It was different. It was like cloud nine… I was floating on top of the cloud on the water… it was quite enjoyable.  

Getting In

I can’t remember Dean coming over with the Jet-ski. He asked If I was okay, and I said, “No!” He goes, ‘Why, what happened?’ He just saw a lot of blood coming out of my head, and he knew something was up there because I wasn’t really with it. And then Kipp jumped in the water to help me up onto the sled.

This is what information I’ve been told… And then Chris Bryan. He was the only person filming out there at the time, and he started heading in, and we followed the wake into shore.

I was on the sled by myself, holding my head, I had my arms up kind of above my head with my hands I think holding the side of my head.

And then I remember the boys said it took 15 minutes. And Dean was saying ‘we got two minutes to go.’ My vision was still not all there, and I knew I did something to my neck, it was so painful, so I knew not to move…

The Ambulance

When we got to shore there were three ambulances and five cop cars there, waiting. Kurt rang from the water because he knew something was up. They treated it as a spinal. They got me in the back of an ambulance, did the log roll over – Did all that.

They gave me some fentanyl painkiller because they couldn’t give me the green whistle because it was a head trauma.

I knew it was okay, because they did the test on me – my fingers, my toes, pressure points. I could feel them touching me. So at the back of my mind, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got no spinal injuries. ’.. They cut the wettie off me. I was shaking, I’m not sure if it was shock or whatever, or cold, and then they got me to hospital.

Hospital

And then I was just in hospital on my back for like, three days straight … lying on my back in a neck brace, and no more than 30 degrees up …

They did CT scans, and then they said, ‘just don’t move’ in case it’s’ fractured, because you can still be paralysed. And then the process was just a lot of scans, MRI scans, pulling the shells out of my head.

Every time they brought food, I couldn’t see the plate. I was just having a stab with my fork and trying to guess, if I’m stabbing it. And it was just all over my chest.  They wanted me to keep eating because I’ve had so much Endone. 

Last night I had a full meltdown. I stripped down and the nurse put ice on me to cool me down. It was like a panic attack, because I was in that position for like, two and a half days…

At the moment the trauma is just around my neck and the shoulders – the pain is crazy because everything’s all locked up… I’ve been horizontal for three days. My muscles have been switched off… The neurosurgeon came in and said, ‘Look, you’ve just got to keep trying to get mobile now.’

Reflections

I reckon I’m a very, very lucky person… If I hit on top of my head, I reckon I’d be paralysed for sure… It was more above my ear.

It was thinking about my kids, on the jet ski when I was coming in that scared me.  ‘What did I do?’ Thinking, like, what kind of damage have I done now I can’t play with the kids… They were at school… I was meant to be on pick-up.

It’s definitely crossed my mind (wearing a helmet) It doesn’t take much out there to hurt yourself. There’s been a few injuries, Kobe Graham. Jack Baker. And now myself. And then, Jughead too on the Code Red Day.