A County Donegal man who was on a bus that caught fire at the start of a 10,649 mile (17,138 km) journey to surprise his oldest friend on his 50th birthday in Australia has successfully made it for the big day.
Ciaran Crawford and all 14 other passengers managed to safely exit the bus before it went up in flames last week in Letterkenny.
Despite the delay, Mr Crawford managed to make his connecting flight to Doha in Qatar and then safely on to Sydney to make John Shiels’s birthday.
”He is one of my oldest friends. We haven’t seen in each other in years and I wasn’t going to miss it,” he said.
Mr Crawford told BBC News NI he could never have expected his journey to begin in the fashion it did.
As he boarded the Expressway coach in Letterkenny, which was bound for Dublin airport, he took his seat ready for the four-hour journey to the airport to begin.
But just before 21:00 local time, only moments into the journey, the bus came to an abrupt stop at the side of the road.
”The engine must have been overheating at that stage and I could see the driver calling the depot,” Mr Crawford explained.
The driver then proceeded to turn the bus around and attempted to gingerly return the vehicle to Letterkenny.
”Then there was a big bang and everything conked out,” he said.
