"I've got constant flashbacks and just like this still-motion picture. I can still see that car. It's like a photo of it coming over the cliff. All that debris coming through the fence. I can still see that coming straight at me. I still wake up and, second guessing yourself, which way do you go."
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One week after a car launched off the cliff at Bar Beach and nearly wiped out his family, Dave Constable is struggling to come to terms with what he saw as he stood in ankle-deep water holding hands with toddler son Malachi.
In between chasing the busy 19-month-old around their Lambton home, he tries to recall details of what he calls "the event" on a windy Thursday morning last week.
"Someone yelled out, 'Car over the cliff, or something like that.' I was holding him with my right arm and I just pushed him out of the way and I've fallen to my knees," the coalminer says.
"Then just hearing this thud, the car, directly to my left.
"When the car landed I turned around and saw he was about two metres from me on my right, just standing up crying."
His wife, Bonnie, reaches across the sofa and squeezes her husband's hand.
"I'm incredibly thankful. I don't know whether Malachi would still be here," she says.
"I don't know how close it all was. It sounded so close. Malachi could have been a lot more hurt than he was. A few metres makes a big difference.
"I think Dave is amazing, but he's honestly his own worst critic."
Malachi escaped with just a small bump on his head.
Bonnie, a child care worker, was struck by part of the car as she stood on the sand talking to sister-in-law Bec, who had just arrived with her young daughter.
She is back home on crutches after having three screws inserted in her broken left femur during a two-and-a-half-hour surgery in John Hunter Hospital.
She had her back to the cliff when the white Volkswagen Polo sped down the Bar Beach car park, hit the white fence near a Bathers Way lookout and landed 30 metres below in shallow water.
When police examined the car, its speedometer was stuck on 90 kilometres an hour.
"The police don't actually know what landed on me," Bonnie says. "All I know is I landed hard on the ground and I was just lying there in absolute pain.
"It was incredibly loud. Just the sound of it was terrifying. I can't describe how terrifying that was when you're in total calmness, at the beach of all places, just lying there, people everywhere."
An off-duty doctor came to her aid as she lay on the beach, sand in her eyes and mouth.
"I just remember going, 'Is Malachi OK?'
"I believe we were being looked after and there was divine intervention, because that doesn't happen. We're all here. We're not just all here: we're all in one piece."
A small army of fire and rescue crews, policemen and parademics arrived on the scene to help.
Bonnie says that, in all the confusion, Dave told the police Malachi was born on the "32nd of February, which doesn't exist".
Dave has the white T-shirt he was wearing at the time. It is riddled with holes where the car's battery acid sprayed him.
He says the scene was like a stunt from an action movie.
"The car was airborne all the way over. As soon as it hit the water, that's where it stayed. It landed there. It might not have been a perfect landing - it might have landed on the front wheels - but where it landed is where it stopped.
"The passenger-side door was probably a metre and a half from my left hand."
Dave, who works at the Hunter Valley Operations open-cut mine near Singleton, says he felt "helpless" to save his wife as the car flew towards him and their son.
"Hearing that noise and seeing all that debris coming over the cliff, you haven't got time to think.
"Which way do you go? It's hard to know what trajectory, which way to go.
"A mathematician would be able to work out how long it takes at that speed to get there."
"I knew where Bonnie was, and obviously I had this little guy. I was just hopeful ... that she was going to be able to get out of the way and not get hit by it.
"You've got this little fella that you fling out of the way and you're just absolutely helpless to Bon.
"The car has basically gone over Bon's head and landed a couple of metres ... it could have been anything."
The 46-year-old Wallsend woman allegedly behind the wheel suffered only minor injuries.
Newcastle Local Court heard on Thursday that she has a history of mental illness. She has been charged with dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm.
Dave recalls seeing the driver and his wife lying on the sand barely two metres apart after the crash.
"It was pretty horrific, just seeing Malachi crying on his own, and looking over and seeing Bon just motionless on the ground.
"You think you're in a safe place on a beach. The only real danger is sharks or a rip if you're out swimming."
For Bonnie, the crash was an eerie echo of a similar accident 41 years ago when her aunt and uncle, Thora-Lou and Stephen Smith, saw a car go over the same cliff.
"My aunt and uncle witnessed the crash in 1979 and were the people who reported it to Newcastle police station."
Last week's outing was the first time the family had gone to the beach after winter.
"It was significant for us as Malachi is at a more exploratory age and was going to be digging holes and building sand castles," Bonnie says.
"That was our favourite beach, even in the winter, even during coronavirus. We'd drive there to put him to sleep when he was little, park there and go get a coffee and sit in the car.
"I don't really want to go back.
"Sometimes I think I have come to terms with it, then I stop and go, 'I don't think I really have.' I think I'm OK, then I see a photo of Bar Beach and think, 'I can't look at that.'"