A little boy and a big stroke of luck have spared a Thirroul family from an out-of-control car that crashed through their house and into the bedroom where they should have been sleeping.
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Four-year-old Leo gets up like clockwork each night and moves into bed with his parents Jeremy Park and Jenn Martel, who is six months pregnant.
With the family dog, Arthur, also present, their bed is usually a crowded place.
But no one was home on Monday night. The family was safe in Sydney about 3.30am on Tuesday when the driver of a Toyota Corolla lost control coming down Kanangra Drive, smashed through their George Street front fence and into their house, the historic 101-year-old Dwyer Cottage.
The family credits little Leo with inadvertently saving their lives by breaking his arm at his first soccer lesson earlier on Monday.
He was taken to Wollongong Hospital, but when doctors couldn't find a pulse in his affected wrist, he was transferred to Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick in case he needed microsurgery.
Ms Martel was staying with family in Sydney when she received word of the car crash, and phoned her husband, who had slept at Leo's bedside.
"My son is obsessed with superheroes, as most boys are," Mr Park said.
"When he's older and we can explain to him the gravity of the situation, maybe he'll realise he was a superhero without knowing it."
Mr Park arrived home to find the family's belongings in strange places and the letterbox on the roof.
Heavy metal components from the sash windows had shot across the bedroom and become embedded in the timber wall panelling.
"Bits of timber [had] just launched like javelins through the wall," Mr Park said.
"I just couldn't sleep [the next] night. I was lying in bed, thinking about what could have been.
"If [Wollongong Hospital] had been a little less cautious about [Leo's] pulse, my wife would have been there - and the new baby ... we all sleep in this bed - even the dog sleeps in that bed.
"We would have been there if Leo hadn't broken his arm."
The car took out two timber posts on the front verandah, causing the roof to sag.
It pushed the bed through the wall and shunted a piano in the next room into a different position.
A prized antique sideboard that had been directly in the car's path "exploded" and rained pieces of tile and timber across several rooms.
The noise of the crash woke neighbour Damon O'Loughlin, who hurried to the house.
"There was a massive crash, I knew it was a car straight away but when I saw it, it was almost surreal how much damage had been done," he said.
"It was almost like a movie set."
Grateful for their good fortune, the couple are nonetheless grappling with complex insurance processes and the task of restoring the cottage.
They are just the third owners and, like previous occupants, had retained many period features that have now been destroyed.
