A teenager thought she was going to die after a horrific horse accident left her with internal injuries so severe doctors described it as a “surgical catastrophe”.
Ava St Henry, 15, had been preparing for her first campdraft near Monto, about a three-hour drive southwest of Bundaberg, in March 2025 when a routine run on her horse Odette turned into a life-threatening emergency in front of horrified spectators.
Campdrafting is a uniquely Australian equestrian sport where riders separate one head of cattle from the heard before guiding the beast through a figure-eight course and out a gate.
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The Gin Gin High School student had ridden horses since she was a toddler and was confidently working cattle moments in her first run before disaster struck.
“The one I filmed was just perfect,” Ava’s mother Gina St Henry recalled.
“She chose the beast. She worked it. Cut it out. The horse was working well. Out the gate, round the pegs. Did a perfect pattern. Perfect routine.”
But on her last run, as Ava rounded the first peg, the animal suddenly turned in front of her horse.
“We were told by people who were in the ring watching, she’d got around the first peg at some point that beast then turned in front of the horse, which then flipped the horse and threw Ava into that fence,” Gina said.
“And then the horse landed on top of her.”
The 15-year-old was smashed into a steel fence at full speed before the horse collapsed onto her body.
“She had whiplash. Then she had a crush,” Gina said.
“Then somebody thought they’d saw the horse possibly stand on her when she got up.”
Gina raced into the arena after hearing screams from the crowd.
“I just heard a lady yell out, ‘Ava’s had a fall’,” she said.
“And so, I started running and I called out, ‘is she up?’ And the lady said, ‘no, she’s not up’.
“She was lying on her side. And I got to her and yeah, big severe cut above her right eye and lots of blood. And she was pale and she just said, ‘Mummy, my tummy really hurts’.”
Ava instantly knew something was terribly wrong.
“Initially, I thought I was going to die, the pain was unbearable,” Ava said.
“The pain was all in my abdomen, and it was spreading everywhere. It was like I had been winded but like a hundred times worse.”
“She was just starting to bead a little bit — a bit clammy,” her mother said.
“It was in her eyes too. Uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.”
The force of the impact caused devastating internal trauma.
Ava said her Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) surgeon likened the impact as intestinal whiplash.
“When I hit the metal fence, all of my intestines ripped out of their original place and were forced back,” Ava said.
Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) rushed to the scene. Paramedic Rachel Mack quickly realised the teenager needed urgent specialist care.
“One of the first things I did was ask for a chopper,” Mack said.
As Ava’s pain intensified, Mack arranged for a LifeFlight helicopter to meet them at the Monto Hospital helipad, but during the ambulance journey, even small movements became unbearable.
“When we were travelling in the ambulance to Monto helipad, Ava just said everything — every bump she felt — was too much,” Gina said.
“Very intense. So, I’m glad we had the chopper.”
Ava’s father Michael St Henry said seeing his daughter in agony left him in tears.
“Seeing Ava and then her eyes and it just brought me to tears because of the pain she was in,” he said. “It was like there was just a wave of it.”
By the time the LifeFlight crew arrived, Ava’s condition had become increasingly critical.
Bundaberg-based critical care doctor Dr Aaron Quay said she was suffering severe pain and dangerously low blood pressure.
“When we first got to Ava, she was a young girl in a severe amount of pain, with a transient period of very low blood pressure before we got to her,” Quay said.
He immediately feared catastrophic internal injuries and using specialist ultrasound equipment inside the helicopter, the medical crew confirmed their fears.
“We’d given her a lot of pain relief, almost emptying the bags of medicines for her as well,” Quay said.
“What we knew is that there is likely a surgical catastrophe going on, which it was, we should go to Brisbane.”
Initially, Gina hoped her daughter could stay closer to home for treatment, but Quay urged the family to send Ava to Queensland Children’s Hospital.
“He came over and he said, ‘if this was my daughter, I’d be going to Brisbane’,” Gina recalled.
Doctors later discovered Ava had suffered multiple liver lacerations, spinal fractures, severe bowel damage, pancreatic injuries, a perforated gallbladder and a tear to her aorta — the body’s largest artery.
“A little bump with just the tear of the aorta, it could have been just a little bit more of a tear, and she would have bled out,” Ava’s father said.
Surgeons removed Ava’s gallbladder, part of her pancreas, part of her stomach and sections of intestine during emergency surgeries.
She spent 10 days in intensive care and almost four months in hospital recovering and despite the extent of her injuries, Ava has since returned to riding horses.
This week, she reunited with the LifeFlight and Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) crew who treated her during the terrifying rescue.
Mack said seeing Ava healthy again was emotional.
“She was up and about, chipper, walking around. I got to see photos of her riding her horses again,” she said.
“To see her like that after the huge ordeal she’s had over the last few months is just incredible.”
Ava described meeting the team that saved her as “amazing.”
“It was so amazing to say thank you for everything they’ve done for me.”
