Ordeal Over And Reunited With Family

Newcastle Herald

Monday December 1, 2008

By MELISSA LYONS

AFTER being trapped for 38 hours in a Mumbai hotel fearing he might never see his wife and two children again, Garrick Harvison has returned home to his loved ones.

One of a number of Australians now able to tell of their lucky escape from the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Hunter winery export manager was reunited with his family in Sydney on Saturday night.

"That was the main thing to get back to my kids and my lovely wife, and to remember how lucky I am," Mr Harvison told The Herald yesterday.

"I'm playing with my kids now . . . and now I just want to take a few days off to get away from everything and just spend time with my family."

With the nightmare over, Shirsten Harvison finds it hard to believe that just days ago her husband barricaded himself in his hotel room as gun battles raged in the corridor outside.

"I don't think any of this has hit home at all. We were just saying that it just feels completely surreal, out of a horror movie," she said.

Two Hunter doctors are also due to return home today after coming within 200 metres of a car bomb that exploded near their apartment while they were visiting family in Mumbai.

Rupa and Yash Gawarikar were due to fly to Australia on the night of the first attack, but instead were stranded at the family's home in Mazgaon, central Mumbai, with their daughter, 2, and five other relatives.

The couple said how lucky they were because they had visited the sites of the attacks just days before.

"We'd been to these places that are now attacked, which is a really terrible thought, what could have happened," they said.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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