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After a year from hell Jessica’s still smiling

Packed To The Rafters star Jessica McNamee reveals to Clare Rigden how she survived family dramas, a nasty bike spill and being suddenly single …

Late last year she almost lost her sister in a terrible car accident, and then she had her own brush with death after rolling her dirt bike during an adventure holiday in Bolivia.

Yes, it’s fair to say it’s been an eventful year for Rafters star Jessica McNamee, who’s also recently found herself single after two years.

“I was actually doing a photo shoot when I got the call about my sister Bec,” Jess says. “She was in Port Hedland in Western Australia at the time, on a road-trip around Australia, and her car got run off the road. There had been a storm and there was lots of debris on the road. Everyone was in the car, including her kids, and they were all fine — except my sister. They had a caravan on the back and the car tumbled off the road. When they crashed Bec was scalped and broke her back.”

What followed was a stressful time for her family, who rushed to be by Bec’s side.

“My older sister Mel was in a plane crash in 1999 in Thailand. It was a huge crash and only 45 out of 150 passengers survived,” Jess says. “She broke her back and had really bad gashes in her leg. But thankfully she’s almost 100 per cent fine now.

“When Bec’s accident happened, it was horrifying, and very weird considering both my sisters sustained very similar injuries in their accidents. Fortunately, they are both fine now.”

And so too is Jess, who very nearly didn’t make it back from her two-month trip abroad during the Packed To The Rafters production break last summer.

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