'Moment my life changed': Skydive gone horribly wrong
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AN AWARD-WINNING wedding photographer shares the graphic details of a skydiving crash that nearly killed him in tomorrow's Weekend Magazine, and has released a video of the incident.
Dicky Beach resident Ben Connolly is now a successful wedding photographer, being recognised with more than 50 international and national awards.
But in 2002 a skydiving accident at Currimundi nearly killed him, after he jumped from the plane too far from the landing site and had to crash-land into a retirement village.
Lying on the ground with numerous broken bones, a mouthful of blood and his tongue nearly bitten off, he managed to turn on his side and clear his airway.
"I couldn't feel any pain but I knew that something was extremely wrong. I was missing a bit of my tongue, it was there, but it was sort of half off," he said.
It was the beginning of a long road to recovery.
A skydiving videographer and photographer at the time, he captured the footage of his own near-death experience and compiled a video of the incident and earlier dives for the Daily.
Ben's raw, emotional account of the incident is printed in full for the first time in Weekend Magazine.
