Luke McCallum was only 16 when he decided to join the Royal Australian Navy.

Born and raised in Broken Hill, Mr McCallum applied to be an electronics technician with the navy and had the paperwork filled out before his birthday.

“Pretty much immediately after my 17th birthday, I got the phone call and was offered an early position to join up and proceed down to the Royal Australian Navy Recruit School down in Melbourne,” he said.

“I consider myself quite privileged to have started early.”

In 2002, Mr McCallum was deployed to the Middle East.

During one of the training exercises, his team had to climb down a rope from a helicopter.

“I basically exited the aircraft from about 60 feet up in the air, fast roping out,” Mr McCallum said.

“[I] did not land well, couldn’t control my decent as I normally would, so I impacted the steel flight deck very, very hard.”

Mr McCallum broke multiple bones in his left leg and shattered his right heel.

“It was a serious accident, I got flown back home to Australia and spent three months in hospital in Perth,” he said.

Getting back to service

After the accident, Mr McCallum was told he would be medically discharged from the navy, which he refused to accept.

So, he worked hard during rehabilitation to get himself back to a deployable status.