Landing on his back with a thud, teenager Jake McCollum didn’t fancy his survival chances after falling 80 metres from a mountain in a national park.
‘I remember thinking it was probably all over for me,’ he said.
The 18-year-old was ‘pretty banged up’ after plummeting from Mount Walsh north of Brisbane, abruptly ending his first solo bushwalk.
He suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs, internal bleeding and a ‘decent’ head laceration.
Crawling over to his backpack, Mr McCollum activated a personal identification beacon – a portable device that sends a distress signal and location to emergency services – and hoped for the best.
The mobile phone he had used to take a photo of the view from the mountain’s summit just moments earlier was smashed.
Yet half an hour after his mountain fall, Mr McCollum heard a call coming through his ‘hand me down’ AirPods.
By the time he had crawled over to collect his Bluetooth headphones he had missed 10 calls.
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Jake McCollum (pictured centre, with his parents Tim and Rachel) suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs, internal bleeding and a cut to the head after falling 80 metres during a hike
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Mr McCollum plummeted from Mount Walsh, north of Brisbane, during his first solo bushwalk
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Thankfully it rang again and Mr McCollum tapped on his AirPods to answer – it was his mum.
‘I heard really, really faintly “mum, I’m hurt really bad”,’ Rachel McCollum said on Friday as she recalled the November 2025 incident.
‘It’s probably the worst news you can ever hear.
‘I don’t know how many times he said during that phone call “I think I’m going to die”.’
His mother stayed on the phone with father Tim, relaying messages to authorities searching for their son as they completed the 90-minute drive from their Bundaberg home to the mountain.
Mr McCollum’s position was difficult to locate – he had not used the main trail and his beacon was ‘bouncing off boulders’, confusing the coordinates.
Then the AirPods’ batteries died.
But Mr McCollum pressed his ears against his damaged phone and somehow could hear his parents’ faint voices as a rescue helicopter approached.
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Mr McCollum was able to use his AirPods to answer a call which led to his rescue
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The 18-year-old activated a personal identification beacon which allowed rescuers to find him
‘When the helicopter did arrive, I remember thinking “oh, this is great” but then it went right past me,’ he said.
‘I was talking through the phone and saying (to his parents) “it’s gone past me, it’s gone past me!” – it was back and forth for quite a while.’
Five hours after Mr McCollum’s fall, LifeFlight aircrew officer Shayne White finally saw the teen’s legs in the thick canopy.
It took an hour for the rescue team to stabilise him before he was stretchered over to a winch site and taken away by helicopter.
Barely two months later, the McCollums enjoyed an emotional reunion with the rescue team.
‘He’s a very lucky boy with a good outcome,’ Mr White said on Friday.
‘If his AirPods and phone weren’t working, we might not have found him.’
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