Peter Walsh has just missed his first day of work as a state politician since he was elected to the seat of Swan Hill 21 years ago (before winning Murray Plains in 2014).

It has taken a lot to stop him from maintaining his perfect parliamentary record – such as a ruptured Achilles tendon, the unfortunate aftermath of some overenthusiastic training for his recent assault on the Kokoda Trail with fellow Nationals MPs, Mel Bath and Tim Bull.

“I strained it tackling the 1000 Steps at Tremont and I started doing physio straight away, but time was getting tight, so the doctor recommended some anti-inflammatory injections to help improve it,” Peter explains.

“It certainly improved it a lot, so I was hoping it was all good to go,” he says.

“Unfortunately, I was a little premature in my optimism. By the halfway mark of the trek, it had flared up again, and was being compounded by some bad blisters, so the last few days required some very strong painkillers to keep me going.”

And they did, with Peter finishing the trek up and down and up and down the towering peaks of the Owen Stanley Ranges at the same time as the rest of his group, and heading home, where some kind of relief for the Achilles problem was a priority – after he had rested it.

But bad was unexpectedly well on its way to getting a whole lot worse when, soon after returning home to Echuca, Peter missed his footing stepping back from a car park to avoid a car he saw coming his way, and his strained Achilles was immediately ruptured.

“Now that was a very different scale of hurt, and from there, it was a bit of a blur with scans, tests, doctors, surgeons and an unexpected opening for repair barely 72 hours after seeing the first doctor,” Peter recalls.

“One minute I had been planning the resumption of Parliament after the winter recess and the next, I was on my way to the Epworth Richmond for an operation on Monday night,” he says.

“The surgeon, Will Edwards, ran me through the procedure at some length, and emphasised the duration – and difficulty – of the rehab I am now facing.

“Which starts with two weeks in bed, basically flat on my back so my leg is level with, or above, my heart. Two weeks, without exception. That’s not even on the couch in the lounge or sitting at a desk with my foot on a chair.

“He warned me going brain dead would be the hardest challenge, and after just two days in hospital, never mind two weeks in bed, he is spot on.”

Peter is not even allowed to use crutches to move from point A to point B – he has been issued with a knee scooter on which to prop his injured leg for the minute or two he is allowed to be vertical from time to time.

Then begins the laborious process of six weeks in a plaster cast, then a moon boot with a heel, the start of physio, of working to ever so slowly stretch his slightly shortened Achilles tendon to match the length of the good one in his right foot.

This begins with the heel, then with wedges in his shoes, with walking to emphasise working the repaired tendon, and then toe raises, and gradually, as the months tick by, the tendon will stretch millimetre by millimetre without compromising the delicate surgery required to put it back together.

The second he cut open the back of Peter’s leg, Will declared the damage was not as bad as feared – there were already plans in place to harvest tendons from his big toe to help rescue his Achilles.

Instead, with incredible speed, Will set about pulling the body’s biggest tendon back together. But just before he committed to the final stitches, he made several attempts to check both feet would be the same length post-op as they were before injury.

As he juggled the tension he was creating on the exposed tendon, he was seeking a result where the left leg would be slightly tighter than the right, ensuring the tendon would have the room it needed to stretch during rehab.

Peter missed all that excitement, blissfully anaesthetised throughout, but his prize on discharge Wednesday morning was a shopping bag chock-a-block with medications, from painkillers of various strength to anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and other things with large Latin names (and fortunately dosage instructions in English).

Told by his surgeon there are no medals for the person who takes the fewest painkillers, and guaranteed his foot was really going to hurt, Peter was ensconced in his bed, his home for the next fortnight, by mid-afternoon Wednesday, quite knackered by the long drive from Richmond.

“Yes, the foot does hurt a bit. It was numb initially, but all the feeling has come back and once the extended anaesthetic had worn off, you knew you had been through some heavy-duty work,” Peter confessed.

“But I know I have no option but to follow the doctor’s orders to the letter, or who knows what sort of a mess I could end up in – but he’s given me a very colourful description of what I can expect if I don’t get it right,” he added.

“And no, I don’t have any plans to head back to the Kokoda – it was a spectacularly amazing opportunity, I met so many marvellous people, and I have come home very humbled by the whole experience, and feeling a bit of a fraud by my small injury compared to what happened there more than 80 years ago.”

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 10 August 2023.