Thinking it had been shut off, Clive Weier stuck his finger into the combine harvester attachment he was cleaning to scrape away some oats.
Unfortunately for the elderly Queensland farmer, it had only jammed.
"All of a sudden it ... took off again and tore my hand off," Mr Weier said.
In a second the farmer had lost his right arm from the elbow down.
Thankfully for Mr Weier, his neighbour's reaction was just as swift.
Graham Terry said it was just by chance he happened to be helping Mr Weier at his Mondure property northwest of Brisbane on March 30, 2025.
He quickly clamped his hands around his mate's arm while Mr Weier's son Leigh called triple zero before applying a tourniquet.
"I did a course about 35 to 40 years ago, but I think it was just instinct," Mr Terry said of his reaction.
"I knew I needed to stop the bleeding."
The neighbour and son's quick thinking saved Mr Weier's life, LifeFlight doctor Daniel Bundock said.
"He was bleeding heavily. His wife tells me that his boots were filled with blood," said Dr Bundock, who was part of the LifeFlight crew who transported the farmer to hospital.
"You probably don’t want to see the injury. It was quite gruesome.
"Clive’s a pretty lucky man."
And very resilient, it seems.
“I met him on probably the worst day of his life, and he said to me: ‘I’ve had a shit of a day’," Dr Bundock said.
Mr Weier has since recovered, celebrating his 89th birthday.
His "she'll be right" attitude has helped him embrace life as a left-hander.
"I can’t bury my head in the sand and think I can’t do this and I can’t do that," he said.
"I’ve got to think positive and I’ve got to get on with my life. It’s happened. It’s history. There’s nothing I can do about it."
Mr Weier is paying it forward, recently organising for his local community a First Minutes Matter workshop - LifeFlight's free trauma training course.
His recovery came full circle when Mr Weier recently met with Dr Bundock at LifeFlight's Toowoomba base, giving him a hearty left-handed handshake.
