By DENNIS AMOR

A CARAVANNER has described how she watched in horror as a 4WD with her husband and four young grandchildren on board and towing their caravan overturned and crashed.

"It was like a slow motion dream," Queensland grandmother Margaret Waters told Caravanning News. "I just couldn't believe it was happening right in front of me. It was a miracle they escaped alive. God must have been with them that day."

The accident happened as disability pensioner Margaret, 54, was following her carer husband Murray, who was hauling their recently rebuilt Viscount caravan, along the Wide Bay Highway west of Kilkivan.

She was travelling with their friend Elizabeth after a holiday at Maaroom, near Poona Bay in the Sunshine State.

Recovering at her home in Kumbia, near Kingaroy, Margaret said: "My friend's husband was in our vehicle and I was behind with his wife so that the men could chat about men's things and the women about women's stuff.

"We were going down a hill and hit a bumpy stretch when I saw our caravan suddenly came unhitched and start swaying all over the road. It was a caravanner's nightmare ... the caravan was just being held by the safety chain. The electric brakes must have still been working because Murray managed to slow right down to about 20kph."

She told how her 59-year-old husband frantically wrestled with the steering wheel before his rig jackknifed, overturned and smashed into an old stump at the side of the road. "The caravan seems to have gone under the car and flipped it all," she said.

Margaret recounted that seeing the drama unfold was "incredible" and how her first thoughts were for her grandchildren, aged between seven and 13.

"My friend told me I was out of her car before it had even stopped," she recalled. "I am 153kg and only 5ft 3in tall but that didn't stop me. I just ran screaming and as fast as I could to the wreckage. I was frantic that something had happened to Murray and my darling four grandchildren."

But quick-thinking Murray had already clamboured through the window of the Pajero's  jammed driver's door and was pulling three of the children to safety. "I got the other little bloke through a broken window," Margaret said.

The 1977 Viscount Supreme twin-axle caravan, which was not insured, was badly damaged. It was the couple's second holiday in the caravan they bought for $500 and which had been completely rebuilt by Murray.

"We have suffered over the trauma of losing the caravan, especially after putting so much work into it and not having it insured," Margaret said. "Murray is quite depressed. But at least we are all still alive ... it could have been much worse."

Meanwhile, a tyre blow-out is being blamed for head-on smash between caravan and car on Pacific Highway near Coffs Harbour in NSW.

It is believed the puncture caused the southbound caravan and Ford Escape to career out of control into the opposite carriageway and collide with a Mitsubishi Pajero.

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