Please join us for a chat with local author Pete Harris and Leanne at our Port Macquarie Library on Saturday 21st February at 1.30pm.

Pete Harris is a local resident, lifelong PDHPE educator, and author who works at Camden Haven High School. He prides himself on being a role model — not through theory, but through lived example. After surviving a catastrophic motorcycle accident with less than a three percent chance of survival, Pete endured significant physical and emotional trauma during a long and uncertain recovery. He began writing with raw honesty and dark humour about pain, identity, and what it truly takes to rebuild a life. His work draws equally from the classroom and the trauma ward, offering a grounded, unvarnished look at resilience.

SO YOU GOT F*CKED UP
On April 4, 2022 Pete Harris rode his motorcycle to work for the first time. He didn’t come home. This is his story of recovery. In his own words, he ‘got fucked up.’ Big time. He was hit and crushed by a car that failed to give way. More horrifying was that the driver drove over him, mistaking him for a median strip. Doctors at the scene gave him less than 3% chance of survival. Pete woke up five days later in Intensive Care in the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, some 300 kms away. He’d had two lifesaving surgeries on internal organs, a helicopter transfer to Newcastle in bad weather, surgery on a shattered pelvis, his spleen removed and shoulder surgery still to come. Pete doesn’t think for a moment that his story is worse than others. Rather, he shares what he has learned in his progression from active PE teacher, father, and husband to a ‘fucked-up shell of a human’ and the actions and experiences that have led him out of the ‘shitstorm’. It is more than a story.

It is a plainly written supportive compilation of learnings aimed at others suffering something similar. Pete writes without jargon or gloss. There’s swearing, stories, examples and, most importantly, descriptions of how his support network and he continue to work together. It’s the book Pete wished he had when he woke that first day