Val Gardiner is alive and kicking and ... laughing.
The Wanganui real estate agent is convinced someone was looking after her on Friday when her car spun out of control, rammed through a fence and landed upside down in a stream at the bottom of a steep gully at Kai Iwi.
She hit a patch of loose gravel on the side of the road, hit the brakes ... and that was her big mistake, she said from her hospital bed on Friday.
She slid from the road (SH3 heading towards Kai Iwi) skidded through a wire farm fence, shearing the fence posts, and then plunged about 6m into a deep gully.
"It was all in slow motion. I thought as I was heading for the fence I would come into a paddock and stop. But there was no paddock. The car hurtled over into a gully the size of a two-storey house."
A couple who were travelling behind Ms Gardiner's 2000 Volvo climbed down into the gully to get to her.
"They thought I was dead ... they called out, 'Are you okay?' and I yelled back, 'Yeah I think so, but you will have to help me out because I'm a big woman and I can't get out on my own'."
During her slow-motion slide off the road, Ms Gardiner had her head down, and with the front and side airbags blown out and her seatbelt fastened, she was pinned in the car.
"I'm just so lucky I was in a solid car like my Volvo. I wouldn't have liked my chances if I'd been in a little flimsy Japanese car."
But her beloved Volvo is now a write-off.
"Well, I'm not, and so how's that for amazing luck?" she said.
Ms Gardiner was on her was back to Wanganui yesterday after showing a house to a client in Waverley.
And she thinks she's made a sale.
"After I showed them the house I had a lovely milkshake which was so delicious I ended up having another one and that was my lunch."
She was assessed at Wanganui Hospital and that included a series of x-rays.
"Nothing. I'm good. Not even a scratch."
Late on Friday she was keen to head home.
Recalling her crash freaks her out, "but here I am and now all I want to do is put my lipstick on, brush my hair and go home."
Car plummets 6m down gully
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