Misadventure Memoirs

Arriving at Melbourne airport on Sunday after our bus trip from Geelong, we were pumped for our glorious sojourn in Fiji! We eagerly wheeled towards the escalator heading towards International Departures, however, instead of winging our way to paradise soon thereafter, we spent the entire day at Royal Melbourne Hospital!

It all started as Col, in typical gentlemanly fashion, stepped aside to allow me to walk onto the escalator with my newly purchased Kmart med/lge hardshell suitcase. Col followed on behind me but, nek minute, all hell broke loose! Instead of my bag tucking in nicely onto the stair below me, it skewed sideways and tipped onto the stair below dragging me bodily with it! I toppled straight backwards, taking Col out as well in a game of catastrophic human skittles! Like some out of control Panzer tank, the jagged metal edges of the escalator steps kept rising up to shred our elderly flesh as we both momentarily lay there, dazed and confused until Col’s Boy Scout training kicked in and, in a stroke of genius, he MacGuyver rolled to the right and lurched back behind his head to reach for the emergency ‘off’ button of the escalator.

We both lay there for a few seconds like a pile of geriatric jetsam, each performing our personal damage assessment appraisals, until Col arose, relatively unscathed. We were joined within seconds by an airport Customer Liaison volunteer who held up my head while a kind bystander went to fetch some bottled water for us. From some secret doorway within the bowels of the building appeared a young chap by the name of Steven, dressed wholly in black and armed with a walkie-talkie- Steven had merely to show the back of his hand to fellow passengers approaching the escalator to send them scurrying for the lift instead. As Col began to explain how the carnage had occurred, Steven assured us he already knew as he and his colleagues had watched it all unfold on CCTV.

Meanwhile, I had recovered sufficiently to at least sit up on one of the escalator stairs, but was still in the grips of a vasovagal syncope episode, feeling simultaneously like I was going to faint or vomit, shivering uncontrollably and unable to move to the wheelchair which Steven had made miraculously appear at the bottom of the escalator.

It was at that moment that a bolt of intense pain shot through my chest from front to back. I managed to start some deep breathing and within minutes was in the wheelchair being guided along Embarrassment Avenue by Steven to the VIP room to await the arrival of Ambulance staff. Although the chest pain was starting to abate, the paramedics ran an ECG, which showed enough variation from normal for them to recommend taking me to the hospital for blood tests to rule out any issue with my heart.

Many hours later, I was released from hospital in time for us to catch an Uber to a hotel near the airport, have dinner and wait out the night to determine if we could resume our travel plans on Monday. We had our driver in stitches describing Col’s MacGuyver manoeuvre and the likelihood of our CCTV footage making it onto YouTube…or at the very least, providing part of the entertainment package at the Melbourne Airport Christmas party this year!

When we arrived at the airport the following morning to salvage our bags and rebook our flights, we were assisted by Jenny who immediately knew our story from the 7am staff briefing! She escorted us to the Fiji Airways Service Desk, mentioning to the young man behind the counter that we had left our luggage in their care the previous day, he responded knowingly with “Ohhhhh, you’re that couple that fell down the escalator yesterday!” …and helped us to check in!

Cut to Friday 5 December 2025 – a gathering of ground staff huddle around a monitor, plastic flutes of bubbles aloft  as one person exclaims “check out the look of dismay on her wee face as she realises that the angle of her body trajectory has an inevitable outcome”…and they all piss themselves laughing!!  

Postscript: The matching scabs on our respective left legs from the flesh-shredding monster machine’s relentless rise are nearly healed!