Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Plane Down in Africa: Search Party Lost About this episode Deep in rural South Africa, it’s a tough life for a farmer. John Moor has spent years tackling thieves who pilfer his livestock. One day he takes a bold step - chartering a plane to search for some missing cattle in the Drakensberg Mountains. He hopes it’ll give him the upper hand… but everything comes crashing down. John and his companion will find themselves stranded and injured somewhere in the huge range. The mission must switch from recovery to rescue…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Duncan Barrett | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by Jacob Booth, Liam Cameron, Miri Latham, Matt Peaty | Assembly editing by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:03 John Hopkins? It's April 5, 2002, in the mighty Drakensberg Mountain Range in South Africa's Natal province.
1:12 John Hopkins? It's a sprawling escarpment, 2,000 meters above sea level. A network of giant, jutting rock formations surrounding a patchwork of lush, green valleys.
1:25 John Hopkins? The area takes its name from the Dutch Drakensbergan, literally "dragon mountains." And there is something magical, even sublime, about the place.
1:41 John Hopkins? But on this particular Friday morning, 35-year-old farmer John Moore is in no mood to appreciate the view.
1:50 John Hopkins? He is dragging his friend Mark Freeman along the rough ground of one of the valleys.
1:57 John Hopkins? John is sweating, panting, as he heaves Mark's limp frame, glancing back only occasionally to see how much distance he has put between them and the dangerous spot they were just in.
2:10 John Hopkins? They're still not safe. There is an acrid scent of smoke in the air.
2:15 John Hopkins? Mark is conscious, but barely.
2:19 John Hopkins? His face is a bloodied mess, caused by the injuries he sustained just moments ago.
2:25 John Hopkins? John himself has a shooting pain in his neck, but he pushes on, hauling his friend towards a stony outcrop.
2:33 John Hopkins? There is a large, sloping rock here. A poor excuse for a hospital bed, but it'll have to do. As he sets his friend down, John's eye is caught by something nearby.
2:46 John Hopkins? He and Mark are not alone.
2:52 John Hopkins? Coiled up on the rock, just feet away from them, is an African puff adder. A metre long and as fat as John's bicep. As a farmer, John knows a dangerous snake when he sees one, and the puff adder is one of the deadliest. It can strike at lightning speed, too quick for the human eye to see it coming.
3:12 John Hopkins? And the serpent's venom is extremely fast-working, leading to hemorrhage within a matter of hours.
3:19 John Hopkins? Untreated, your chances of survival are less than 50/50.
3:23 Speaker 03 Puff adders are incredibly toxic. It doesn't take long. They attack your flesh and your vital organs in a very quick manner. If one of us had been hit by that guy, it would have been all over.
3:38 John Hopkins? John fixes his eyes on the puff adder, taking in its elegant, black-and-yellow stripes. For a moment, the two of them seem to be looking into each other's eyes. The only question is who will strike first. Suddenly, John grabs the snake bite's tail and hurls it into the long grass.
4:00 John Hopkins? It slides away.
4:02 John Hopkins? He blows his cheeks, relieved.
4:06 John Hopkins? But getting rid of the snake is just the beginning. He's got far bigger problems to deal with right now.
4:14 Speaker 03 I had to make really good decisions, really quickly. We now needed to really spring into action to start or create some kind of rescue plan. I knew for sure that we couldn't walk out. We were miles and miles away from anywhere, so I knew I had to do something.
4:40 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
5:03 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet John Moore. Out in the rural expanse of South Africa, it's a tough life for a farmer. John has spent years battling thieves who pilfer his livestock.
5:16 John Hopkins? One day, he takes a bold step, chartering a plane to search for some missing cattle in the Drakensberg Mountains. He hopes it'll give him the upper hand. But in the end, everything comes crashing down.
5:31 Speaker 03 People might say I'm a risk taker. I don't think I am. It is a mistake, and in hindsight, it is a mistake to fly in the mountains in a small plane. We are flying in what was no better than a Sardenton.
5:43 John Hopkins? When he and his companion Mark find themselves stranded and hurt somewhere in the huge range, the focus of John's mission will switch from recovery to rescue.
5:54 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:26 John Hopkins? It's early April 2002. John Moore wakes in his bed at his family's main farm, rubbing his eyes and yawning deeply.
6:36 John Hopkins? The first rays of dawn are just beginning to pierce the horizon.
6:41 John Hopkins? His wife, Galen, rolls over and goes back to sleep.
6:45 John Hopkins? But as a farmer, John is used to early mornings. He gets up, pours himself a cup of coffee, and goes outside to inspect his cattle.
6:56 John Hopkins? The sun-dried, grassy plains fan out before him, golden runways pointing towards distant mountains. The Drakensberg Range is about 50 kilometers away, towards the border with Lesotho.
7:09 John Hopkins? The farmer strides over to a metal gate and opens it, before weaving his way through the animals as their grunt and swish flies away with their tails and ears.
7:20 John Hopkins? John's family have been rearing cows in South Africa for six generations. They have a breeding herd of over a thousand, spread across a number of farms, around 8,000 hectares of land.
7:32 John Hopkins? But in recent years, keeping tabs on that much stock has become increasingly difficult.
7:38 Speaker 03 The scourge of stock theft back then just became rampant. It was driven by poverty. Africa is rough with poverty, and the district we lived in, the area we lived in, was no exception to that. But there's also a very big portion of it driven by greed. So we had these gangs or teams, whatever you'd like to call them, of semi-professional thieves, really, who would come into an area and either steal cattle live and drive them off, or we'd have gangs or groups of people come in and slaughter cattle on the farms and maim them by hacking their hamstrings, killing them and then carrying off the meat or the loot and possibly selling it for financial gain, really. And it became a business.
8:22 Speaker 03 It became incredibly debilitating for us because it was just, the pressure was relentless. It just kept on and on and on.
8:30 John Hopkins? John and his fellow farmers have resorted to desperate measures to protect their cattle, spending thousands of South African rand on armed guards
8:40 John Hopkins? and even at times, joining the fight themselves.
8:43 Speaker 03 The people stealing these cattle and the gangs who were involved, they were fully prepared to go all the way and we had to match that, unfortunately. We had got into gunfights before, trying to protect our stock, which seems pretty crazy to the average man out there, but that's the level of confrontation we had. On two occasions, we met the full force of AK-47 fire. On both those occasions, miraculously and luckily, no one was injured or killed.
9:16 John Hopkins? With two years in the military behind him, John isn't shy when it comes to confronting the cattle rustlers. But with such a sprawling farming operation, often the thieves are long gone before he even realizes they've struck.
9:29 John Hopkins? Typically, the first he knows about a raid is when a herdsman from one of his family's satellite farms calls to give him the bad news. Which is exactly what happens on this April day in 2002.
9:45 Speaker 03 On this occasion, he would have phoned me to say, "Look, the fences have been cut. Cattle are missing. The count is wrong." This particular incident, I think we had 20 or 30 cows and their calves stolen. So, you know, back then, that is a significant amount of livestock and a significant amount of money.
10:04 John Hopkins? John's response to the herdsman's call is immediate.
10:11 John Hopkins? The farmers in the area have an unspoken rule. When a cattle theft occurs, you have to show you're doing your best to recover the animals, to send a message to the gangs that you aren't going to let them get away with it.
10:24 Speaker 03 The farm work would come to a complete grinding halt, muster every possible man, woman, child, and all the vehicles and equipment we could. And we'd do it on foot, on foot and on vehicle. But because of the remoteness of these areas, it became increasingly difficult. And the stock thieves became increasingly wily to our attempts.
10:49 John Hopkins? John and the others set out to search for the cattle, trundling along dusty dirt roads until they reach the satellite farm up in the highlands. Here, the search party splits up.
11:03 John Hopkins? Some take the roads, others go on foot, combing the sprawling savanna for any sign of the missing animals, any clue as to where they might have been taken. They talk to the local people for information. Some are more forthcoming than others. When it comes to the cattle gangs, fear and intimidation are rife.
11:22 John Hopkins? Eventually, the search party is forced to concede defeat. For now, at least.
11:29 John Hopkins? They're not going to find the cattle this way. The thieves have hidden them too well. But experience tells John the most likely place to look.
11:41 Speaker 03 We'd get information from the tribal authorities or the tribal people. Between where we live and the mountains is a big tribal area. And this is where the cattle were being taken into 99% of the time. They had sort of safe areas where the information didn't come from. And we knew really well, if we went in there, we were probably up for a fight.
12:06 John Hopkins? John has been swapping notes with his fellow farmers, in particular a friend called Mark Winter. Mark has a hunch that the missing animals are being held in the foothills of the Drakensberg. In fact, he tells John they're almost certainly in one particular area, the valley where the wattle trees grow.
12:27 John Hopkins? John knows these mountains well. Decades earlier, his dad helped carve out many of the original footpaths in the range. But trying to find the cattle on foot would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And vehicular access to the mountains is all but impossible. There's really only one way to proceed, that's from the air.
12:54 John Hopkins? Fortunately, John's uncle Hilton is part owner of a local plane, a small two-seater Piper Cherokee 140, based at an airfield 20 minutes' drive from the home farm.
13:06 John Hopkins? Its call sign is Echo Bravo Mike. Known to the locals as EBM, it's a regular sight in these skies.
13:15 John Hopkins? John decides to ask Uncle Hilton if he can borrow the plane for a few hours for a reconnaissance mission up to the Drakensbergs.
13:25 Speaker 03 I phoned my uncle up and said, "Look, what are the chances of us getting a couple of hours up in the air?" He said, "Look, I'm not available for whatever reason, but Mark Freeman, I'm sure he'd be loved to add a few hours to his logbook."
13:38 John Hopkins? At just 19, Mark Freeman is a good 15-years John's junior. John's known him since he was a kid.
13:46 John Hopkins? But these days, Mark is a newly qualified pilot, and he's always keen to put in some extra flying time. They agree to meet at the airfield at 6am on April the 5th. An early start on what promises to be a bright, clear morning in the African savanna.
14:04 Speaker 03 The weather forecast, the previous evening when we looked on the telly or the radio, it really gave us a great forecast. There was no wind or low wind. It was going to be a very calm day, bright sunshine. It was all stacking up to be a perfectly good day to fly an aeroplane. I had no misgivings about going up that day whatsoever.
14:23 John Hopkins? Just before he leaves home that morning, John's wife, Galen, makes a suggestion. He's recently brought a Nokia 3110, an almost indestructible little black brick.
14:36 John Hopkins? "Take it with you," Galen tells him.
14:39 John Hopkins? But there is an issue.
14:41 Speaker 03 I looked down at it and to my dismay, I saw one bar of power, one little bar of charge. And I'd forgotten about putting it on charge overnight. So my initial thought was, well, that's just going to be a waste of time. Why would I take that with me? So anyway, I remember clearly Galen, my wife, saying, "No, take the phone. It might be useful." And I might have protested. Once you got up into those areas, reception was going to be absolutely zero. Anyway, I put the trusty Nokia in my pocket, kissed her goodbye, gave the kids a hug, and took off for the airfield.
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16:30 John Hopkins? It's morning on the 5th of April 2002, at a small municipal airfield in the heart of South Africa. The sky is unblemished, and the day's first sunbeams are already warming the tarmac, creating hazy waves of heat.
16:46 John Hopkins? A huge hangar door groans open, and a little two-seater plane taxis out onto the runway. It's young pilot Mark Freeman, guiding the aircraft forwards. He stops at a fuel bowser to fill up the tank in the plane's wings. Sitting in the passenger seat inside the cramped cockpit, John Moore watches as 150 liters of petrol are guzzled up by the tiny craft. Enough to buy them a good four hours of flying time.
17:17 John Hopkins? With a full tank, Mark taxis up to the runway, performs his final safety checks, powers up the plane, releases the brakes. The little aircraft picks up speed, 30, 40, 50 miles an hour. As the end of the runway approaches, John feels the front wheels lift off the ground, and they soar into the brilliant blue sky.
17:43 Speaker 03 We took off from the airfield at about 6:00, 6:30, turned to the west, and we can fly relatively low. We'd have been anywhere between 1,000 and 1,500 feet above the ground. And we just followed the routes that I believe we'd take to get to where Mark Wintzer, my farming friend, had described. Would be a good place to start the search for his cattle. So we flew low, we flew very close to and almost over the house, my house. We had woken up that morning. We flew across the Wagon Drift Dam, which is a beautiful, big national dam. And then we followed the road, gravel road, up into the rural area. I still remember flying up there and Mark and I looking at each other and almost having
18:26 Speaker 03 a laugh about, you know, just how perfect today was going to be for doing what we did. Because make no mistake, flying in these mountains in a Piper Cherokee 140 is probably stupid, but young and brave, that wasn't really on the radar for us. And we proceeded to fly in there with absolutely no trepidation. You know, if it had been bumpy and windy and low visibility, I would have pulled the plug immediately. But there was, to the best of my knowledge, there was no reason we shouldn't be doing what we were doing on that morning.
19:01 John Hopkins? The plane cruises onwards, smooth and level, as the propeller on its nose hums. Before long, Mark and John are flying through a large valley, all around are soaring rock faces quilted with green. Ostensibly, things couldn't be better. All of John's focus is on his missing herd. His eyes dart this way and that, scanning relentlessly for any sign of the animals. But what the two men don't know is that a freak weather event is headed their way, totally invisible to the naked eye. It's a cold front, coming all the way from Antarctica. A mass of falling air that will do its best to drag anything passing through it down
19:46 John Hopkins? to the ground. Suddenly, out of the blue, John sees a warning light flashing in the cockpit, followed by the piercing buzz of an alarm. He looks over at Mark. The 19-year-old's knuckles are turning white on the control yoke. In a second, everything has changed. Wide-eyed, the youthful pilot turns to his passenger. "We're not flying," he tells John, "remaining as calm as possible. We're falling."
20:19 John Hopkins? Unable to generate enough lift, the plane's engine has stalled.
20:26 Speaker 03 I think it was disbelief when we kind of looked at each other and I don't know if we had the conversation that maybe it's a fault. But very quickly we realised there was no fault about it because we were definitely going down. We weren't plummeting out of the sky, we were just not flying anymore. The forward speed of the plane wasn't creating enough lift over the wing. So even though we were making forward momentum, the plane was no longer flying as it's designed to do. And technically you are falling, so you're no longer flying and your control very quickly becomes an issue.
21:02 John Hopkins? Already swooping low, Mark has less than a minute to execute an emergency landing.
21:08 John Hopkins? But finding a spot to sit down in the Drakensberg's is virtually impossible.
21:12 Speaker 03 We knew we were in huge trouble. The options were pretty much non-existent because in front of us were just a series of walls of vertical rock faces with very small grass bands between them. I just said to Mark, "Pick a spot and make your best of it."
21:30 Speaker 03 Then we pretty much, we were preparing for impact.
21:34 John Hopkins? Mark aims the plane at a raised, sloping plateau. Rocky, grassy, uneven, narrow. But it's about as close to a landing strip as they're going to find out here.
21:48 John Hopkins? It should be long enough, just about, for the aircraft to come to a halt before crashing into a wall of rock at the far end.
21:56 John Hopkins? That's if they can make it onto the plateau to begin with. At the near side, it's perched on top of a sheer cliff of rock. And the aircraft is losing altitude fast.
22:08 John Hopkins? As the rock wall gets closer and closer, John braces for impact, pushing back hard into his seat.
22:15 John Hopkins? The plane clears the barrier just. But then, there's a flurry of metallic cracks and crashes as the craft loses its landing gear and propeller, stripped away as they skim over the edge.
22:30 John Hopkins? Moments later, the flimsy metal fuselage hits the ground.
22:38 John Hopkins? The little silver sardine tin careened through the scrubby grassland, spinning wildly. Through his side window, John watches, dumbstruck, as one of the wings breaks off and falls away. It is the longest few seconds of his life.
22:56 John Hopkins? And yet, throughout it all, he feels strangely serene.
23:04 Speaker 03 There's no doubt in my mind this was it, because the chances of landing in up there were so remote.
23:11 Speaker 03 I just remember being enveloped in this big blue or green light, or aura, or feeling about things. And I don't remember noise, I don't remember pain, I don't remember the impact as such. I just remember it all being over.
23:39 John Hopkins? It's seconds later. The flurry of bangs and rattles that had reverberated around the hills has disappeared.
23:48 John Hopkins? Now, as John's senses slowly return to him, the main sound is that of his own breathing. The planes come to a halt. They haven't been totally pulverized, careening into a wall or plummeting to the ground.
24:05 John Hopkins? Somehow, things have just about held together.
24:10 John Hopkins? John calms his breath and tries to make sense of his surroundings.
24:15 John Hopkins? He kicks out the door on his side of the cockpit, surprised to find that the fuselage is resting directly on the ground.
24:23 John Hopkins? No wheels, and no propeller either.
24:29 Speaker 03 Enter this sort of disassociated state, what I certainly did, where the reality of your situation, the miracle of not having died, because that's exactly what you're expecting to have happened, kind of come back and you have to then work in the reality, I guess, of what's around you. And Mark was slumped over the dash. I think he was probably unconscious at that stage. I kind of had to pinch myself to work out whether I was actually alive or I was dead. From there, I realized that, no, look, we have made it. We have survived. The plane has stopped. We found ourselves sitting on a grassy slope. So miraculously, and with a lot of skill from Mark's flying ability,
25:11 Speaker 03 we skimmed literally over the top of this sheer rock wall and landed on a grassy slope. That's how the mountains look, these vertical bands with some grass. So we literally smeared ourselves onto one of these grass bands. And now we're sitting there on the deck with no wheels, no propeller and one wing.
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26:11 Speaker 01 The award-winning American Airlines Advantage program rewards more than travel. It takes your whole life to new heights. Earn miles when you fly, as well as with thousands of your favorite brands, and then redeem those miles for flights, upgrades and experiences worldwide. Advantage members also enjoy earlier boarding and free high-speed Wi-Fi in flight. Join for free and start earning towards your next adventure at aa.com/spotify.
26:44 John Hopkins? As he becomes more lucid, John is hit by an overpowering smell of petrol. The plane's fuel tank was in the wing that broke off. And now he, Mark, and the whole of the fuselage are covered in the highly flammable liquid.
27:02 John Hopkins? Already, there's smoke rising from the instrument panel in front of him. John reaches over and turns off the key in the ignition.
27:11 John Hopkins? But as he does so, he realizes there's something wrong with his neck. His head flops forward awkwardly. The muscles that normally hold it up have been torn. Whiplash.
27:26 Speaker 03 I thought I might have had a broken neck at that stage because I literally had to hold my head up with my hands. I wasn't able to sit in the prone position. My neck was that damaged. I thought, okay, well, I've never had that before. So if I have got a broken neck, it's only seconds from disaster at one wrong move. And this could all be over.
27:47 John Hopkins? Cautiously, John reaches behind him, groping for something in the back of the cockpit that might support his head.
27:55 John Hopkins? His fumbling hands are light on a red jacket. He pulls it through the gap between the seats and wraps it tightly around his neck. But as he ties the knot on his improvised brace, he feels a searing pain in one of his fingers. He looks down.
28:14 John Hopkins? It's bent at an impossible angle.
28:18 Speaker 03 One of my fingers was facing backwards, so I must have put my hand on the dashboard, I think, as we came down and pushed a finger out of place.
28:25 John Hopkins? Barely missing a beat, John grabs the disjointed digit and yanks.
28:31 Speaker 03 So I do remember pulling that back into the socket and, yeah, just getting on with it. I just knew that we had to get on with it because at that point, I didn't know if Mark was critical or just knocked out.
28:46 John Hopkins? With his finger back in place, John tumbles out of the aircraft and onto the scorched grass. He makes his way around the front of the fuselage, past the spot where the propeller was ripped off the tip of the plane. He hauls open Mark's door.
29:02 John Hopkins? But as he goes to unclip his friend's seatbelt, he finds it's already been torn away from the chair by the force of the crash.
29:11 John Hopkins? Mark is still slumped forward over the dashboard, there's blood dripping from his mouth and nose.
29:17 John Hopkins? But at least he's still breathing.
29:20 John Hopkins? The biggest danger right now is what will happen if the fuel catches alight.
29:27 Speaker 03 Having watched enough movies about planes going up in smoke, instinctively, I think it was, just realised that we had to get the hell away from this plane. I grabbed Mark and I proceeded to drag him and myself away from the plane, expecting it to go up in a ball of flames.
29:43 John Hopkins? John heaves his friend away from the smouldering wreck. Mark is semi-conscious now, groaning in pain as John drags him roughly along the ground.
29:55 Speaker 03 We were on a, probably a thirty degree slope of grass. There was not far we could really go from the plane because of our environment. So I just remember pulling him away and there quite often are these open areas between the grass of a flat rocky area. We would have been twenty, maybe twenty paces, twenty metres away from the plane. We all thought, if it goes up in smoke, we are going to be okay.
30:23 John Hopkins? Doing all he can to keep his injured neck straight and steady, John inches his way towards the rocky surface.
30:31 John Hopkins? Dripping with sweat, he finally stops around sixty feet from the spitting, smoking aircraft. Hopefully that's far enough.
30:40 John Hopkins? But just as he solves one problem, another rears its ugly head.
30:47 Speaker 03 Lo and behold, as I settle Mark down on this rock, which is probably two metres by two metres in size, a bit of a flat sloping rock, there's a dirty big African puff adder, coiled up just on the side in the grass. Puff adders are incredibly toxic snakes. This guy was about one and a half metres long.
31:12 John Hopkins? Suddenly, John thrusts out his arm, grabbing the snake by the tail and hurling it into the long grass.
31:19 John Hopkins? It hastily slithers away.
31:23 John Hopkins? Another danger averted. John can at last turn to his companion and attempt to assess Mark's injuries.
31:32 John Hopkins? As the teenage pilot comes to, the pain is overwhelming.
31:37 Speaker 03 You could see the injuries he had. Not that I knew what the internal ones were, but there was significant swelling starting to appear around his eyes and his jaw. I just remember saying to Mark, "Look, you're not in any state to help us get out of here. The best thing you can do is just try and be still." So I knew I had to do something. From that point, I really just went into rescue mode. What must I do to get the right message, the right people, so that they can get us off here? I knew from all my training that the worst thing I could possibly ever do is leave Mark and go for help, because I didn't know where to go for that help, because we were that remote. And I'd made a very quick and conscious decision
32:21 Speaker 03 that we have to get someone to us. The emotional part was really pushed aside. I just went into rescue and survival mode and knew for a fact that every decision I made would either work for or against us from that point on.
32:40 John Hopkins? The countdown has started. The two men need rescuing as fast as possible.
32:47 John Hopkins? But there is only one way to summon help, and it's back inside the plane: the onboard radio.
32:55 John Hopkins? The aircraft went down so quickly they didn't have a chance to put out a mayday.
33:01 John Hopkins? It's been about fifteen minutes since the crash, and so far at least the fuselage hasn't gone up in smoke.
33:09 John Hopkins? Maybe with a bit of luck it'll stay that way, but with fuel coating the wreckage, it'll only take a spark.
33:17 John Hopkins? Cautiously, John makes his way back towards what's left of the plane. His clothes positively reek of highly flammable aviation-grade gasoline.
33:29 John Hopkins? He plants his feet on the burned ground, reaches inside the cockpit, and gingerly lifts the receiver from its cradle. But without power, it's not going to be much use. He'll have to bring the plane's instrument panel back online.
33:46 John Hopkins? Slowly, carefully, John turns the key in the ignition. He doesn't dare breathe.
33:55 Speaker 03 It's a bit like defusing a bomb, I think. You just, you don't know if it's gonna go off. So I was ready to roll and duck and dive and jump over the cliff if I had to, I think. It is a calculated gamble, I guess, to turn it, turn it on and make the call. Was it wise? I would, I don't know, but it was certainly one of those calculated risks I was prepared to take at the time.
34:23 John Hopkins? As the key turns, there's a flash of lights as the plane's instruments come alive again.
34:31 John Hopkins? John's shoulders relax.
34:34 John Hopkins? For the moment at least, the bomb doesn't seem to have gone off. But there is no time to waste. He presses down hard on the call button and sets about broadcasting a mayday signal.
34:45 Speaker 03 I just called out, "Mayday, mayday, mayday." "This is Echo Bravo, Mark." "This is John Moore speaking." "We've crashed in the Drakensberg." "Can someone help?" Over.
34:57 John Hopkins? But all that meets his plea is a fizz of white noise.
35:02 John Hopkins? John repeats the message a few more times.
35:06 John Hopkins? But it's no good. No one is there.
35:11 John Hopkins? And then, a lightbulb moment. The plane's radio isn't, in fact, his only means of communication. There is the Nokia he brought with him at his wife's insistence, with its single bar of charge.
35:26 John Hopkins? It's still somewhere in the back of the cabin. The chances of getting any reception up here in the mountains are minimal, but it's obviously worth a shot.
35:35 John Hopkins? John leans over and fumbles around behind the seats until his fingers find the chunky phone.
35:42 John Hopkins? He grabs it and hastily checks the green and black LCD display. The phone still has a single bar of power. But no signal to speak of.
35:57 Speaker 03 I walked a couple of metres, maybe fifty or a hundred metres away from the plane, to a more exposed outcrop, where I thought maybe just miraculously would get some kind of signal. And initially, nothing. I don't know how long I waited, I sat there for, but I do remember back then that signal, certainly in our area, came and went. So I sat there for maybe a couple of minutes. And eventually, to my amazement, I looked at my phone again and there was one bar of signal.
36:32 Speaker 03 So now I had to make the choice of who do I call? Because five out of my 10 friends would think I'm joking. So I decided in that moment to call Hilton, my uncle, who was a co-owner of the plane. Because I believed he would be the person who would be the most receptive to the story he was about to hear. And he wouldn't say, well, you're pulling my leg. So anyway, I called Hilton and I said, Hilton, it's John here. We've crashed the plane. And before he could say, well, ha ha, I said, look, just listen to me. I've probably got one call and I need this call to count. And I relayed him the story. I said to Hilton, get hold of Mark Winter, my farming friend.
37:16 Speaker 03 He probably knows more or less where we are. And I said, look, we need a doctor. Mark Freeman, my pilot, is in serious and deteriorating state.
37:28 John Hopkins? John's uncle confirms that he has understood. Barely has Hilton finished talking and the phone goes dead. The weak signal lost.
37:40 John Hopkins? John pockets the device, then makes his way back to Mark.
37:45 John Hopkins? He has to have faith in others now. He has done all he can.
37:52 John Hopkins? The next part is the hardest, the waiting game.
37:57 John Hopkins? An hour passes with no news and no sign of rescue.
38:02 John Hopkins? On his rocky bed, Mark is looking increasingly unwell.
38:07 John Hopkins? The bruises on his face are swelling up so much that he's starting to have trouble breathing.
38:13 Speaker 03 He was physically deteriorating. As the adrenaline faded, he was in more and more pain and more and more trouble. I had a real concern that what I'd managed to get in place wasn't going to be quick enough or good enough or or anything in fact, because I just didn't know what was coming from that phone call. I still remember that feeling really well. It's like, it's a bit of a void. We're sitting in no man's land, knowing that we'd made comms, but not knowing what they were able to pull off and what was going to transpire.
38:49 John Hopkins? The sun's rays hammer down on the two men as time seems to pass slower and slower.
38:58 John Hopkins? But then, finally, after an hour and a half of waiting, John's little phone, still hanging in there on its final bar of charge, starts ringing.
39:10 John Hopkins? Remarkably, it's caught a bit of signal again.
39:14 John Hopkins? This time, it's Mark's dad on the line. He tells John that a rescue helicopter is on its way from Durban to search for them.
39:21 John Hopkins? Help is coming, if they can both just hold on.
39:26 John Hopkins? But by now, Mark's condition is deteriorating rapidly.
39:29 Speaker 03 He was in a significant amount of pain. I couldn't administer any pain relief, we didn't have any of that. I remember recovering a jacket of his from the plane, because as he went into shock, he started suffering the symptoms of getting cold and hot. So I managed to find his jacket, which I remember putting under his head, because I thought he was really struggling to breathe. So I put him on his side, I put him in the recovery position. I also, at one point, managed to find one of the silver blankets, the emergency blankets, which I covered him in. So I covered him in the jacket, put the blanket over him. I also found a water bottle. I knew he was dehydrating, so at some point along the way, I managed to get him to drink water with much difficulty,
40:13 Speaker 03 because his lips and that were swollen up. He started to look more like a football than a face. I didn't know if he had a cracked skull, but he has comatosis. I assumed that he had facial injuries, not brain injuries at that stage.
40:28 John Hopkins? Another hour slithers by, then a third. Higher and higher, the sun climbs in the sky, the temperature brutally increasing as it does.
40:39 John Hopkins? John does his best to keep busy.
40:42 John Hopkins? He spreads out a large, orange blanket on the ground, attempting to make the crash site more visible.
40:49 John Hopkins? If the chopper is coming all the way from Durban, 200 kilometers away, it'll only have enough fuel for a brief search of the area. Minutes, not hours. And Mark might not survive long enough to wait for a second rescue attempt.
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42:10 John Hopkins? Finally, after more than four hours, John hears the telltale sound of rotor blades in the distance.
42:18 John Hopkins? He looks up to see the burly outline of an Atlas Oryx helicopter, a 15-meter-long military chopper that he recognizes from his time in the Army.
42:28 John Hopkins? But as the Oryx comes closer, it's clear that the pilot hasn't spotted John a mark.
42:35 Speaker 03 No sooner had I located it visually than it turned and went up a valley to the south of us. And that valley could have taken them the best part of 10 or 15 minutes to scout. Anyway, they came back out of that valley, and that's when I first knew that they were really struggling to find us.
42:55 John Hopkins? John has just one final trick up his sleeve, or rather, in his pocket. Quickly, he pulls it out. It's a tiny signaling mirror salvaged from the wreck of the plane. It glints in the bright sunshine. It's not much bigger than a coaster or a CD. Right now, this tiny bit of equipment is their best chance of making it off the mountain alive.
43:21 Speaker 03 I think it's called a heliograph. Has a little R piece, it's got a small hole in the middle of a fairly small mirror. Something you can hold in your own hands, probably six inches above, five inches. As I saw them come into view the second time, they'd have been 10 or 15 kilometres away, I reckon, in a straight line. I, again, moved out to where I was pretty exposed and I used this little mirror and literally used the little, the hole as a peep site and put the helicopter in the centre of that thing. And I just sat there with the determination of knowing that if I stayed long enough, that had eventually said.
44:04 John Hopkins? John grips the heliograph in his hands, trying to angle it in just the right way. Bright flashes of white light bounce again and again off its surface.
44:16 John Hopkins? But away in the distance, the helicopter seems to be moving further away.
44:22 John Hopkins? Until John thinks he sees a change in direction.
44:28 John Hopkins? A few seconds later, he's sure of it. It's coming their way.
44:33 Speaker 03 I just stayed there for a good five or seven minutes. And yeah, it brought, that little shiny mirror brought that chopper right to our feet.
44:43 John Hopkins? Closer and closer, the chopper comes in to land.
44:48 John Hopkins? The heavy slope of the crash site will make a proper landing impossible.
44:53 John Hopkins? But the rescuers improvise. The pilot manages to get just one wheel onto the ground. Good enough.
45:02 John Hopkins? Then, with the rotors still turning, a medic jumps down and begins tending to Mark's injuries.
45:09 John Hopkins? By now, John's friend is in a very bad way, barely able to speak.
45:15 John Hopkins? The medic fits him with an IV and hands John an oxygen mask. He checks them both for spinal injuries.
45:23 John Hopkins? Assured that they can be moved safely, John and Mark are then bundled into the aircraft.
45:29 John Hopkins? Before long, they are airborne once again.
45:35 Speaker 03 We were flown to a town called Petermaritzburg. They closed the main street off. They landed this big military helicopter in the middle of the street. An ambulance was there, ready to pick us up. And we were taken away, taken up to the ER department and assessed.
45:52 Speaker 03 What Mark suffered was severe facial fractures. Both his jaws were broken. One of his eye sockets was quite severely damaged. When they assessed me, it was literally just whiplash. So they strapped on a neck brace. And I spent a couple of hours in a hospital bed and was discharged that afternoon.
46:15 John Hopkins? All things considered, John has gotten off extremely lightly.
46:20 John Hopkins? And while Mark suffered far more extensive injuries, in time, he too is able to make a full recovery.
46:28 John Hopkins? John says he recognizes how lucky the two of them were to cheat death in the Drakensbergs. But he tries to move on as quickly as he can to get back to his life.
46:38 Speaker 03 I don't know, I just kind of was a bit the same old, same old. I just knew we had to get on with it. I wasn't not allowed to fly again. I was quite happy to fly again. And in fact, the funny story behind this was that I think the very next week, we were flying overseas with my wife and some friends. And every time we landed, everyone would cheer and say, one out of two safe landings. And give me a big round of applause. It was a mistake in hindsight, it was a mistake to fly in the mountains in a small plane. Certainly it was a mistake in not knowing or understanding that the weather system is better. The reality of the life we were living at that stage was that
47:21 Speaker 03 there was risk involved in doing what we did. Obviously, we never planned to wind up in the position we did. Certainly it was a rain check. It certainly made me, my young family, more aware of the risks we were taking. And ironically, we got those cattle back many, many weeks later. And through no aerial observation whatsoever, but through information on the ground, I think we got 18 of the 20 cattle back, which was, yeah, great results. It could have ended very badly, but it was the silver lining at the end of a very long, difficult story.
48:01 John Hopkins? But the realities of farming in South Africa begin to take their toll on John and his family. As the years go by, the scourge of stock theft shows no sign of abating. And in 2015, they decided change is needed. The family starts a new life in a new country. Though he never forgets South Africa, his near-death experience, and the lessons he's learned from both.
48:25 Speaker 03 We left in 2015 and now live in Australia. It's a different lifestyle. The safety and security is quite different here. And we don't have to face these kind of challenges. But yeah, at the same time, they are what they are and they've forged who we are. And as I've got older, I've realised that, yeah, it's shaped us, certainly moulded who we were, who I am. The survival, I was quite proud, actually. I still remember writing a letter to the owners of the plane, describing not only how proud I was of how I did what I needed to do, but also how proud I was of what Mark did in his part of getting us onto the ground. I wasn't sad about it and I wasn't distraught about it.
49:07 Speaker 03 I was probably more proud that we had actually learnt through the experience of what we did.
49:14 Speaker 03 It was a miracle. It was a miraculous event. And then beyond that, we saved ourselves.
49:27 John Hopkins? Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet cave diver Martin Robson. In 2012, he is in a remote region of southwest Russia, exploring the depths of Blue Lake, a murky, fog-laden body of water which holds a mystery beneath its surface. Martin is experienced and cool-headed, but hundreds of feet below the surface, a mysterious, invisible, excruciating force suddenly overwhelms him.
49:57 John Hopkins? Semi-paralysed and sinking underwater, Martin will go through an ordeal that will ultimately last not for hours, but days.
50:06 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories.
50:13 John Hopkins? Listen right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.
50:19 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.
50:50 Speaker 01 The award-winning American Airlines Advantage program rewards more than travel. It takes your whole life to new heights. Earn miles when you fly, as well as with thousands of your favorite brands. And then redeem those miles for flights, upgrades, and experiences worldwide. Advantage members also enjoy earlier boarding and free high-speed Wi-Fi in flight. Join for free and start earning towards your next adventure at aa.com/spotify.
Previous Alone in the Valley: Outdoorsman in Peril Next Deep Dive Mystery: Hit by the Bends Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated