Where has Rhys Palmer been? Where hasn’t Rhys Palmer been? Bali, Dubai, New York, Mexico, Colombia, Venice, Milan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. Melbourne and Sydney. For the last 12 months Palmer has barely stood still. These days he is in Kalgoorlie, working in a gold mine and hoping the season will soon get going for his newest team, Kalgoorlie City.

“It’s been a bit of a big year,” Palmer said. “It’s been a weird year, a surreal year, but I’m in a really good head space at the moment and just loving life. I guess I’ve really treated myself, to say the least. I’ve done a heap of traveling, gone surfing, seen heaps of countries, seen a lot of different things, eaten a lot of good food at good restaurants. I’ve done all the sorts of things that you would do if you suddenly got told that you only had six months to live.”

Palmer never got told that. But in the middle of March last year, he came out of a three-day coma to be told that he had been hit by a car while riding his motorbike, that his spleen had been removed, that he had damaged other internal organs, lost a heap of blood and was lucky to be alive. He had no memory at all of the accident but could remember all of the lead-up and with some help from the people around him was able to start filling in the gaps.

It happened the night after he had been at the races with a group of footy friends, waking up to “300 missed calls” and having to avoid the media after a young member of the group had flung a shoe onto the track and clashed with security. To get his mind off it all, and escape the television cameras, he headed for the beach with a friend. “It was just one of those glorious days in Perth. I’ve been riding bikes my whole life so just like any other nice day we went to the beach and watched the sunset down there,” he said. “It was awesome. Then we headed home, and I remember thinking I was pretty keen to have a quiet night. And that’s where it stops.

“I woke up after that in hospital, and my mum and dad were there. I just remember the tension that was in the room, it was something I could never explain. It was so incredible, just the look on their faces and the feeling in the room. I knew there was something really wrong because of the way they were looking at me: they were so happy and so worried at the same time; I’d never seen anything like it before.

“I knew something bad had happened, but I wiggled my feet, wiggled my toes, my hands, and I could feel everything, which was a relief. And once I found out my friend was fine, that was even better. I knew I had some pretty bad internal injuries but once I knew everyone was OK, I was pretty upbeat about it. Then people started to tell me about it, and that was overwhelming. Even the support I had, people calling me and wanting to come and see me, that was overwhelming too. There was so much going on in my head, it was spinning.”

From there, the work started. It was a very different recovery from any sort of football injury he had experienced. For weeks, Palmer was tired and weak. He would start to drift off in the middle of conversations and lasted only 20 minutes the first time he went out, to the supermarket to grab a few things with his dad. He started doing one-on-one sessions every day with a Pilates instructor, and was amazed at the way his body slowly started to repair and be able to do the things it used to do.

“I was getting really frustrated and annoyed for a while because I was so fatigued and I was thinking, is this how it’s always going to be?” he said. “My body really stiffened up, but it’s funny how it can transform and how you can get back to what you used to be. But that took a good two-to-three months, working with her every day. It took a lot of work, but it was the tiredness that frustrated me more than anything. I’m such an active person and used to being out and about, and it just wiped me out.”

At the same time Palmer felt lucky – that there was a nurse in a nearby car, who stopped to check  on him and made sure he didn’t move; that his surgeon did such a great job – and grateful for the people who looked after and supported him, his family and friends. “I’ll never be able to understand what it was like, but my parents and my family went to bed for three nights in a row not knowing what would happen or if I would even pull through it,” he said. “That was probably the positive thing about it, how much closer it brought us all.”

Then the adventures started. Palmer went to Mexico for a friend’s wedding, then saw a bit more of South America. He spent a week in Bali surfing, went home to Perth to replace his lost phone then headed back with a group of friends. It was there that he met his new girlfriend Brooke, a long-time friend of his sister who lived near her in Dubai and, like her, worked as cabin crew for Emirates. “She was only there for 24 hours in Bali, going back home to Perth. It was the only flight she could get,” Palmer said. “So, I was sort of like, who are you?”

Palmer had already planned a trip to Dubai to spend time with his sister (also named Brooke) and he ended up staying there for close to six months, using it as a base for all his other travel. He and his girlfriend were in New York in February, and in Milan just as Italy started to close cities down because of the coronavirus outbreak that has devastated the country. “The news started bubbling around and at first I was pretty blasé about it, like a lot of people,” he said. “But it pretty quickly got to the point where it was obviously going to be better to head back home. And I was ready to come back, by then. You get a bit lazy when you’re on holiday all the time. I was ready to get a routine back.”

Palmer was going to play for Swan Districts in the WAFL before his accident, but in the months that followed it realised he no longer had the desire to train like an almost full-time footballer. He had offers from a few different country leagues, visited Kalgoorlie late last year and then went back for another look when he came home. It felt like a good place to spend some time in.

“It’s been good. And the work’s been great,” he said. “I work with a crushing company, so we pretty much spend all day crushing the big rocks down into little rocks and then feeding them into the mill to find the gold. There hasn’t been any footy yet of course, but for me it’s been long days, getting on the tools, driving loaders, learning some things I’ve never experienced before. I’m actually really enjoying it. I’m having a really good time.

“Things have worked out really well for me and it’s funny, as horrible as this virus is, my sister and my girlfriend have both flown back home and been back around, so it’s been good to have them close as well. Thankfully no-one in my life has been affected by it and life has just gone on. I feel like I’m in a really good spot at the moment mentally, and physically I’m starting to ramp up the running and hoping I get to have a kick again sometime soon.”

It is three-and-half years since Palmer left the GIANTS. He thinks of the club as his team; it’s the one he played the bulk of his 123 games for, the one he chose to join at the end of 2011 as an out-of-contract signing and the one he wishes he never left: Palmer was traded to Carlton at the end of 2016, having started to wonder how he would keep getting games in the same forward line as Toby Greene and Steve Johnson. “I look back and think it’s a shame I had to go, but it is what it is,” he said. “I loved the place so much. I still do.”

Palmer was still only 21 when he made the move to Sydney, playing in the GIANTS’ first-ever game, through all the early losses. He was there as the team made its way into the finals; his last game for the club was the 2016 preliminary final loss to the Western Bulldogs.

“Honestly, I had the best time,” he said. “I came across and the way they looked after the players was so good, not just from a footy perspective. They wanted to know you, wanted to know your girlfriend, your family. There were always events on after every game: win or lose we always stuck together, it was a great group of boys and I knew they’d do great things.

“I remember seeing Stephen Coniglio back in Perth as a young kid, then to come over and see some of the stuff Toby and Jeremy Cameron and these guys were doing was just amazing. Even off the field, we’d play golf and do things like that, and everything those kids touched just turned to gold. I remember being astounded at how good they were and how lucky the club was to have so many of them in one team, running around doing all these amazing things.

“We always worked hard and trained our arses off, but we stuck together and enjoyed our time together too, and it really was a great time. When it started to turn and the wins started coming, it was such a good feeling to have been there from the start and be part of it. They were just a great group of kids, and hopefully for their sake the footy gets back soon and they can win a flag. They’ve worked really hard for years and they really do deserve it. It’s something I’d love to see.”