Beau Medcraft's last day of school was supposed to be filled with fun and excitement. Instead, it ended in serious injury and the deaths of his friends.
The now-14-year-old still wonders why he survived a jumping castle accident when six of his classmates didn't.
For the first time, he's able to talk publicly about that terrible day.
"Got to school, basically all happy, told mum that I was going to have the best day ever," Beau said.
"Got up to class and walked down to the oval with my class, jumped on the jumping castle, and all of a sudden it just took off."
Hillcrest Primary School students in grades 5 and 6 were playing on the jumping castle and inside inflatable zorb balls when a gust of wind lifted them into the air.
Witnesses watched as children fell to the ground from a height of about 10 metres and part of the jumping castle came to rest in a tree.
Falling out of the jumping castle, Beau said he hit the ground with a thud.
"I broke my growth plate, and my wrist and my arm and then I fractured this whole arm," he said.
After that, Beau says his recollections are blurry but he remembers glancing over at the jumping castle seeing it "torn up".
He had entered the inflatable castle with his best friend, so he scanned the grass looking for him.
"He'd took off in the jumping castle and he landed somewhere else," Beau said.
"I don't know where he landed."
At the time Beau says his mind was racing, wondering if his best mate was alright.
"He's not here today," Beau said.
Six children were killed in the end-of-year tragedy —Zane Mellor, Peter Dodt, Jalailah Jayne-Marie Jones, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan, and Chace Harrison.
Beau and two other students were seriously injured.
'I went into panic mode'
Tammy Medcraft will never forget the moment her son's school rang to say he had broken his arm.
"I went to go pick Beau up and I turned the corner into Lawrence Drive and there were police and ambulance and helicopters and cars everywhere," she said.
"I went into a bit of panic mode and thought, he's only supposed to have broken his arm, what's going on?"
Completely unaware of what had happened inside the school grounds, Tammy sprinted inside in search of her son and found him sitting in the office with one of the other parents.
She phoned her husband John to tell him they needed to take Beau to the hospital to have "his wrists put back in place".
John said getting that phone call was "absolutely horrible" but at that stage they were still trying to piece together what had happened.
"Next minute there's updates on the tv and the radio and I'm getting phone calls and messages.
"I've just gone 'hell, what's really going on,' I didn't have a clue," he said.
John had no way of getting to his family as he did not have a car.
"When we sort of found out the severity of it, I was about to pull a dirt bike out of the shed, or my buggy or something, to get to where I needed to go," John said.
"But because I had no way of getting there I just waited until Tammy said that we had to get him to Burnie [hospital], so I said 'righto, get back home and I'll get you to Burnie'.
"We got into Burnie and he was admitted, and we found out the severity of his injuries."
'I wondered why I was here, and they weren't'
Running around the football field kicking goals, it is impossible to tell that Beau was so badly injured just 16 months ago.
While his physical injuries have healed well, he hasn't fully recovered from what happened.
"I wanted to be with my best mate, to be honest," Beau said as he spoke of his survivor's guilt.
"I was wondering why I was here, and they weren't, and why I made it.
"I just didn't want to be here because it didn't feel right."
Beau and his best friend went through primary school together, but it was on the first day of grade six the pair became best mates.
It was a friendship that continued to grow through gaming.
"[We] played Xbox every night, he had arguments with mum and everything, trying to get me to stay on," Beau said.
The pair was obsessed with Fortnite, spending over 260 hours playing the game, and Beau still plays as a way of remembering his friend.
"I message him on Xbox and have conversations with myself," he said.
'Our hearts go out to them every day'
Over the past year, Tammy said there had been many ups and downs, recurring hospital trips and a major focus on the family's mental health.
"I think once I sort of got over the guilt that my child had made it while others hadn't, that was really hard for me to work through," she said.
"We'd give everything that we've got to bring the kids back."
Following the tragedy, the Medcraft family received messages of support from all around the world including China, Canada, and the US.
Beau made an effort to read every message.
"I was grateful for it; I just didn't know what to say," he said.
"I didn't know that many people actually cared, and you just don't know what to say in that moment really."
John is keen to thank the people who showed his family love and support through such a difficult time — the people who dropped groceries at their home and organised fundraisers, the efforts of first responders, teachers, and other parents at the school.
"When this all happened, we were crossing a bridge that we were building ourselves and it was shaky, rocky, it still is," John said.
"Unfortunately, we've got to keep moving forward, and keep going, keep fighting, keep battling.
"The parents that have lost their children, our hearts go out for them every day.
"We can't even think of a word really to make anything feel okay, but we've got a heap of love for them."
A coronial inquest into the Hillcrest tragedy is expected to start later this year.
