Family Joy Turns To Sorrow

Illawarra Mercury

Monday November 22, 1999

A brother and sister have told of the devastation of losing their father in a car crash just as he was celebrating his son's rescue from a snow cave on a New Zealand mountain.

Friday's car smash near Wanaka on the South Island killed Nick Webb, 62, of Canberra and seriously injured his wife Deborah, 57.

Also left with a broken leg in the accident was their 20-year-old son Hugh, who had just survived five days trapped in a snow cave on the Bonar Glacier on New Zealand's South Island.

Mr and Mrs Webb arrived in New Zealand last Thursday, just as news came through that Hugh had been rescued, and the next day they had set off together in a hire car. Soon afterwards, their Holden veered off the road and crashed near Cromwell.

Brother and sister Sally and Duncan Webb arrived in Dunedin from Sydney yesterday to mourn their father and be with their injured mother and brother.

``(We are) devastated, but we have to remember Dad as the most wonderful dad and a really wonderful, happy person," Sally Webb said.

They had last spoken to their father after he had learned Hugh was safe.