By Eleanor Wilson
In November 1997, Kerry Norton and her young family set off from their Berwick home for a weekend camping trip in Gippsland.
But the family only got as far as Leongatha before a horror collision stole her family right from underneath her.
Now she volunteers her time to educate traffic offenders about the dangers of driving, as she shared with Gazette Journalist ELEANOR WILSON.
If you ask any of Kerry Norton’s friends and family to describe her, they’ll paint a picture of a bubbly woman with an infectious laugh and cheeky personality.
But Kerry says it hasn’t always been that way.
“Life is so short and it can be taken from you in a split second, so you’ve got to enjoy it and you’ve got to enjoy the company of the people around you,” she said.
Sadly, Kerry knows more about the fragility of life than most.
It was November 1997 when husband Rick, four-year-old daughter Shani and Kerry set off for a short camping holiday in Wilson’s Promontory.
Christmas time was approaching, Rick had just been promoted at work and Shani was preparing to start school the following year.
“We were driving down to have a weekend away and Rick had forgotten to pack the tent so we had to turn around to get it,” Kerry recalled.
Rick was a night shift worker and had only had about an hour’s sleep the night before the young family set off.
Despite his fatigue, he was determined to spend some quality time with his young family, turning the car around at Leongatha to retrieve the tent.
About 15 minutes later, he fell asleep at the wheel for just a few seconds.
But the loss of control was enough to veer the family’s Holden Commodore onto the wrong side of the road, into the path of a logging truck.
Rick and Shani and one of the family’s two pet dogs were killed instantly in the crash, with the impact so strong it sent Shani and her dog flying out of the car.
“She was wide awake at the time, I held her hand as the impact hit,” Kerry said.
Conscious throughout the ordeal, Kerry was trapped in the wreckage for two hours in the passenger seat beside her husband, who had been crushed by the truck’s logs.
Kerry was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital with a lacerated liver, her femur broken in three places and her wrist in six.
She spent months at Glen Waverley Rehabilitation Centre relearning the basics, how to walk, talk and eat.
“It was horrible returning to the house and just having to pack my daughter’s room up and my husband’s belongings and start again. It was really hard,” she said.
It was Shani’s doll ‘Bubbys’ that was the hardest to pack up from the family home, Kerry said.
“She loved that doll and I just couldn’t let go of it, I still have it to this day,” she said.
“I was 31, all my friends were starting to get married and have kids and everything had been taken from me in an instant.”
Struggling to come to terms with the crash, Kerry reached out to the Amber community group for support, where she met other victims of road trauma, with whom she found solace.
Five years later she began volunteering her time to speak at road trauma awareness seminars with the Amber community, educating individuals who had been convicted of traffic offences.
“People don’t realise how much it can impact your life, so it really hits home for them when I share my story,” she said.
Fifteen years down the track, she said the impact of the seminars has been amazing, both for herself and the road offenders she educates.
“One night a young guy, who was a hoon driver, stood up and he had tears in his eyes and said to me ‘Kerry I’ll never drive like that again, may I hug you?’,” she recalled.
Kerry estimates she may have stopped about 40 people from re-offending by sharing her story.
“Another young girl who was drug affected [at the time of her traffic offence] told me she was going to turn her life around and would never touch drugs again,” she recalled.
“That’s someone’s child that could have got hurt by doing what they were doing – so it’s really important to achieve those breakthroughs.”
Several years after the crash, Kerry met her second husband Neil, with whom she welcomed ‘miracle baby’ Kai, now 18.
“Neil had had a vasectomy and I was told I couldn’t have children again because of the accident, so Kai was our miracle baby,” she said.
In a cruel twist of fate, Neil passed away of lung cancer in 2011.
But Kerry says the adversity her and son Kai have faced has only made their relationship stronger.
“Kai and I are inseparable; he rings me every day to make sure I’m doing alright, he’s a lovely boy,” she said.
“We have a very close bond, we’ve been through tragedy together.”
Along with three stepchildren from her marriage to Neil, she says she has a tight-knit family, which may be the very thing that has kept her strong during times of tragedy.
“Friends and family and community are what has got me through,” she said.
“My friends and family never left my side after the crash, they rallied around me in the hospital, they helped me pack up Rick and Shani’s belongings, they were with me every step of the way,” she said.
“The Berwick community was amazing as well; they raised funds to get me back on my feet and they even mowed my lawn for me while I was recovering.”
That support continues today, with Kerry’s sister Rebecca helping her run her Berwick book shop at Akoonah Park while Kerry works full time in sales.
Endearingly named Shani’s Corner Book Shop in honour of her daughter, Kerry purchased the shop six years ago and spends every weekend working there.
“I used to visit the book shop every week with Shani and let her pick a new book to read,” Kerry recalled.
“I went past one day and saw a for sale sign and knew I had to have it,” she said.
Despite the resilience Kerry has shown, she says the impact of the crash still haunts her.
“It really is a life sentence. I still can’t drive on freeways,” she said.
“I always say to people, ‘treat your car like it’s gold’. When you get in your car, understand it is a weapon and be respectful of other drivers and their safety.”
