Lizz Hills’ holiday to Thailand in December 2004 was meant to be part of her recovery.
While on a trip to the country a year earlier, she’d been involved in a serious train accident that left her with 30 broken bones and an acquired brain injury.
“I was 21 and it left me unable to have kids or to work. My life had been taken away from me,” Lizz, from Queensland, tells New Idea.
“My dad suggested we travel back to Thailand. He wanted to show me the world was still a beautiful place.”
So, Lizz and her father, Dan Martin, flew to Phuket, where they made a decision that likely saved their lives – they went diving.
This meant the pair were out on the water when the tsunami arrived on the morning of December 26.
“We booked an overnight dive trip instead of staying on Phi Phi Island,” Lizz, now 41, says.
The pair decided to surface from the dive early when they couldn’t find any fish and got back on the boat. However, things suddenly took a turn.
“We were de-rigging and the ocean looked like it was boiling,” Lizz says, recalling how the boat started to be dragged underwater.
“Someone cut the anchor rope so we could get to deep water.”
Heartbreakingly, the boat had to leave divers behind in the water. Lizz says the next few hours were terrifying as radio contact was lost.
“We got picked up by a navy frigate and it was then [that] we heard about the tsunami,” Lizz says.
But the magnitude of the tragedy came much later when they made it to land and saw the devastation and the lines of body bags.
“It was chaos and panic,” Lizz says.
“At one point, I was separated from Dad, and I fell down a flight of stairs in a stampede when people thought the rumble of an army tanker was a second wave. I just wanted to get out of there.”
Two days after the tsunami, the duo took the first flight they could out of Thailand to Singapore. Lizz then called her boyfriend, Justin, who’d spent 48 hours thinking she was dead. He rushed to her side.
Lizz credits Justin with saving her from the trauma that followed.
“He saw me at my worst and loved me anyway,” she says. “And he helped me turn to the positives.”
“Before the tsunami, I thought my life had been taken away, but it put me on the knife edge of it really being taken away.
“At first, there was some guilt that I’d survived, but that transformed into gratitude. I knew if I’d died, I wouldn’t want survivors feeling distressed they’d lived.”
The experience also brought Lizz and Dan closer. The family united in joy too when, against the odds, Lizz and Justin had a son, Rowan (left), who is now 12.
Two decades on, Lizz is determined to not let the disaster be the making of her.
She works as a psychotherapist, helping others with trauma and grief.
Last year, she took part in the 6,000-kilometre Trek2Reconnect walk across Australia, helping raise funds for Wild Mountains Environmental Education Centre.
“The tsunami gave me a second chance,” she says.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone and it was deeply challenging to move through, but I saw I was meant to be here and it was up to me what I wanted to contribute.”
Lizz has no plans to visit Thailand again. In fact, she’s promised her family she won’t.
But it’s a place and time that will never leave her, and this time of year hits particularly hard.
“I will reread and revisit what happened,” she says. “It’s become distant because I haven’t wanted to deal with it, but this is the opportunity and time to check in again.”
