A Canberra grandmother and her 21-year-old grandson narrowly escaped death and injury, leaving a now-collapsed Kathmandu temple just five minutes before the disastrous Nepalese earthquake hit.
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Former Orana School teacher Riitta Korpinen and soon to be student Hamish Mckee, now returned from their humanitarian trip to the country, have spoken about their ordeal, saying their lives have been irreversibly changed.
The two had just visited Kathmandu's ancient Monkey Temple, also known as Swayambhunath Stupa, when the quake hit - a spot where Ms Korpinen said at least 20 people were killed.
"We heard that when the temple fell down 20 people went under and died, lots of wounded people who had to wait for help to come," she said.
Luckily, however, by that time the pair were a few streets away in their hire car.
"After five minutes the earthquake hit, and we didn't know what was happening, nobody did, we thought it might be a storm but when I saw the iron fences start to move [next to the car] then I thought this was something bigger," she said.
They then took shelter in a nearby oval along with about 50 others, including tourists.
"Nobody moved. Some young girls were crying so I went to hold them and try to say we will all be ok since we are here together, even though I didn't know if that was true," she said.
Then, a man walked past who had been injured in the temple collapse, skin coming off his face and arms.
They quickly offered their car to take the man to hospital.
"He had been caught under some bricks or something and he was walking down with a friend, he looked pretty rough so we offered him our car. I haven't see much like that before," Mr Mckee said.
Despite being just 10 mins from their hotel they were forced to camp out for the night on the open space after finding tarps.
"We saw some cardboard boxes and they were our mattresses, we just tore the cardboard and put it on the ground. It was a cold night, we sat close to each other, Indians, Ukrainian and Nepalese" Ms Korpinen said.
The day after, they waded through chaotic scene to find the Australian Embassy, camping in the garden before their flight home on Tuesday.
But not before lending a helping hand at the hospital.
"We discovered in the hospital there was no water, they ran out of it, they ran out of food. So we went and bought at least 50 bottles of water and biscuits," she said.
Ms Korpinen and Mr Mckee say they are lucky to be alive.
"It was life changing, I guess. I'll never see anything like that again I hope," Mr Mckee said.
