Fourteen-year-old Gemma Hanrahan is a hero after saving her dad Dominic on the family’s Navigators property last week.
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The year eight student was helping her dad round up the cattle when their cattle dog Cleo jumped between a cow and her calf.
The cow was spooked and took off chasing Cleo.
The dog ran straight towards Dominic – and so did the cow – resulting in him being “flattened”.
“The dog, who’s usually pretty good, chases them around – every now and then one will come out and chase the dog,” Mr Hanrahan said.
“I got it almost in the gate and the dog wheeled in front of me. The cow going in decided she’d had enough.
“If they decide they don’t like you, they can really mess you up.”
He ran towards his quad bike but was then hit and knocked out by the cow, which caused a seizure.
Gemma quickly took control of the situation.
She rounded up the last cow, locking it behind the gate and phoned triple-0.
“The ambulance was worried about the cows being out, so they were happy to hear I’d locked them up,” she said.
The young Loreto College student had been watching Network Ten show Ambulance Australia on television the week before, so she said she knew what to do.
“At first I thought he was dead, then I screamed for a couple of minutes, then I thought ‘I need to do something’,” Gemma said.
“He kept saying he didn’t need an ambulance – it was lucky the lady from the ambulance was on the phone, because he was pretty convincing.”
She stayed on the phone for 10 minutes until the ambulance arrived, helping her dad get his bearings back after he recovered.
Mr Hanrahan was left with a broken toe, a sore back, scratches and slight amnesia.
He left hospital on Thursday.
He said his safety glasses were shattered when he hit the ground, noting how hard the cow had hit him.
“If they were made of glass it would have been a different story,” Mr Hanrahan said.
Gemma said the weight of the incident didn’t quite kick in until her dad was safely being looked after.
“It hit me what happened, but not properly, not until after the ambulances were there and I had to call Mum,” she said.
“My Nan was coming to pick me up for basketball training, and she saw two ambulances and had no clue what was going on.”
Gemma said people should try not to panic in emergency situations – like what she found herself in – and think clearly about what to do.
“The most important thing to do is stay calm, think about what the best thing to do is,” she said.
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