One Breath Away

Daniel Miller had promised his wife, Saimaa, he’d never leave her. But could he stay alive until help arrived?

- Helen Signy

WHEN SAIMAA MILLER FIRST SET EYES ON her future husband, Daniel, she was attracted to his stoicism. A friend of her builder in Bondi outside of Sydney, Australia, he’d joined them for drinks the day his dog had died. He is the sort of man I’d like to be with, she thought. A few months later, she walked out of her Bondi naturopathy practice and he was standing outside, waiting for her. She knew at that moment he would be her partner for life.

They soon moved in together and before long, in 2007, had found the perfect property in Charlotte Bay, on the New South Wales mid-north coast. Daniel, a qualified builder and landscaper, could develop the land into a yoga retreat and one day they could imagine their children running around its grassy paddocks.

“Don’t you die before me,” Saimaa would often joke. Her mother had passed away when she was just 13, and it was unimaginable that she could be left alone again.

“I promise,” Daniel replied. Several years later and the dream had come true. Their children, Kalan and Leilani, were nine and four, and the family had made the property their permanent home, with Saimaa commuting three hours each week to see her clients at her Bondi clinic.

That’s where she was that day in February last year. With the children at daycare and the school swimming carnival, Daniel, 45, thought he’d finish the landscaping around a dam about 150ft from the house. He’d been meaning to tidy up an old rock garden against the dam wall.

Using his three-ton mini-excavator, Daniel started to shift some of the larger boulders and plants. It hadn’t rained for a long time and the water in the dam on the other side of the wall was very low. He steered the excavator to the edge of the dam and lowered the bucket to drag out a load of mud.