Niamh Shackleton
What was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime turned into tragedy for an Australian couple travelling around Canada.
Emma and Daniel Heritage, who hailed from Adelaide, Australia, embarked on a two-year trip to Canada in 2022, but just a few months into their travels the worst thing possible happened.
Emma and Daniel, both 28, were avid climbers and went to Canadian beauty spot, Banff National Park.
While rock climbing, Daniel, who was connected to his wife via a slack rope, lost his footing.
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He was several meters above Emma at the time and she looked up to see her spouse fall down the cliff to where she was clipped to an anchor.
Recalling the harrowing incident, Emma told The Advertiser: "He landed near where I was, it just happened, he didn’t yell or make any noise. There was a lot of bleeding from his mouth, he very quickly lost consciousness and he wasn’t responsive."
She called 911 for help and an emergency helicopter came to rescue the couple.
But it was before landing that Emma realized she'd lost her husband following the freak accident.
"I knew when the rescuers first directed the plan to get me down before Daniel," she shared.
"I think that was probably one of the most heartbreaking moments for me because I had to step away from him."
As Emma was the only person to see the tragic events unfold, she went on to have to relive the ordeal when giving evidence for a Coroner’s Report in Canada to rule out 'foul play'.
But this was the last of Emma's worries as not only was she grieving the sudden death of her husband, but she needed to fork out thousands of dollars to bring Daniel's body back to Australia - something their travel insurance didn't cover.
"I arranged to get him sent to a local funeral home, the biggest issue was I needed to get Daniel home to his family," Emma said.
"But they weren’t going to start the process of getting him home until I paid a deposit and that was about 12 grand [$8,044 USD]".
Daniel's mother ended up paying the deposit.
As well as this, it cost $8,000 dollars [$5,363 USD] to get Daniel's body back to Australia, with the funeral costing another $15,000 [$10,056 USD].
In total, Emma estimated that the expends came in at over $50,000 [$33,520 USD].
With the hefty fees in mind, Emma's twin sister set up a GoFundMe page at the time where kind-hearted people raised over $42,000 AUD for the family.