- Antoinette MacSkimming was left with devastating head injuries after being ambushed with an axe home
- The attack occurred just a day after the death of her close friend, whose son was later convicted over the violent assault
- Now living with permanent disabilities, Antoinette credits her family, friends and fishing club for helping her rebuild her life and find strength after tragedy
Here Antoinette MacSkimming, 53, from Gawler, SA tells her own story in her own words
‘See you soon,’ my friend Tim said shooting me a cheeky grin from the door of the caravan.
‘See you,’ I waved back.
A long-time mate, Tim and I had met 20 years earlier when he drove trucks for my ex-husband’s haulage company.
His sons Beau and Thomas were like nephews to me when they were young.
Sadly, Tim had battled substance abuse and had a strained relationship with his family.
Down on his luck, he’d come to live in a caravan on my rental property in 2017. Together with my housemate Neil, then 57, the three of us shared countless dinners and even went on holidays together.
We kept our front door unlocked for Tim to come inside as he pleased.
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He’d suffered two brain aneurysms and I often drove him to medical appointments.
In April 2023, about to leave for my shift at the dry cleaners, I realised I hadn’t seen Tim the day before.
Rapping on the caravan door, I frowned when there was no reply.
Maybe he’s sleeping in, I thought, heading to work.
When Tim’s boss rang me later that morning to say Tim hadn’t arrived at the scrapyard, alarm bells rang.
Calling Neil at home, I asked him to check on Tim.
Minutes later, Neil called back with crushing news – he’d found Tim’s lifeless body.
I screamed in shock, devastated at losing my dear old friend.
After asking Tim’s boss to get police to notify his family, Neil came and drove me home.
There I spotted Tim’s son Thomas speaking to police. I hadn’t seen him for years.
Before I even got a chance to console him for losing his dad, his anger and grief erupted.
‘This is your fault!’ he shouted.
Thankfully, police intervened, asking him to leave.
Sadly it was found that Tim had died from an overdose.
I couldn’t believe it.
Thomas returned that night, ranting and raving, before the police removed him again.
Tim’s death was hard on us all, but I could see Thomas was struggling.
Everyone grieves differently, I thought.
The next day, Anzac Day, I kept to myself, as I struggled to process our loss.
Then at 8.30pm I heard a knock at the front door.
As I went to open it, I glimpsed a flash of red and yellow.
My vision went grainy as I felt myself falling…
Waking up in the Royal Adelaide Hospital I panicked, my memory blank.
‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ doctors told me, explaining I’d been stabbed with an axe and needed surgery on my head.
My son Nigel, then 31, was also beside me.
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‘What happened?’ I wept, confused.
‘Thomas came back to the house the day after Tim passed,’ Nigel said, describing how Thomas had worn a red and yellow motorcycle helmet to mask his identity.
It explained the flash of colour I’d seen opening the door.
Without warning, he’d savagely bludgeoned my face with an axe, resulting in two black eyes, and four deep gashes on my forehead and face.
The biggest wound, a long gash on my head, extending from above my left eye to my forehead, was so deep it’d sliced down to the bone, fracturing my skull.
I had another cut above my right eye, resulting in fractures to my sinus area, as well as wounds on my upper lip and chin.
I’d needed multiple stitches.
Still wielding the axe, he’d violently attacked Neil too, stabbing him twice before leaving us both for dead.
‘He left you in a pool of blood,’ Nigel said, explaining that he and his wife cleaned up.
‘It looked like a slaughterhouse,’ Nigel chillingly recalled.
At some point after the attack, I’d crawled back to bed where I lay bleeding and unconscious, until we were found by first responders.
They’d been alerted by Beau, who called police, relaying that Thomas had informed him we were both hurt.
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A worried neighbour had also alerted the authorities.
Police swiftly arrested Thomas, charging him with attempted murder and serious criminal trespass.
The blow to my brain during the attack left me with a physical indent in my head along with extreme memory and balance issues.
I mostly relied on a wheelchair, but could manage short distances using a walking stick.
Discharged two weeks later, too afraid to return home, I stayed with Nigel and his wife, who helped me shower and dress.
With my memory in tatters, I had to stop driving and lost my job.
Terrifyingly, that November doctors discovered a blood clot in my lungs which was treated with medication.
And with declining hearing, I also needed hearing aids. Both of these are likely as a result of the attack.
I felt like a shell of myself – stripped of any independence.
If I tried to cook I’d leave the stove on. I struggled to do laundry, and my anxiety was so severe I was terrified to answer the door.
In time, with support from family and friends, I found my feet again, engaging in low-impact activities to take my mind off things.
And three months later, I found the strength to move into a friend’s granny flat. I began going to Playford Fishing and Outdoor Club and there my dear friends Eric, Brett and Dean, and the quiet calm of fishing, has helped me heal.
Then in February 2026, almost three years on from the life-changing attack, Thomas’ trial began in the Supreme Court of South Australia.
I was horrified to hear the assault had left Neil with a fracture to his skull and eye socket, and bleeding around the brain.
When prosecutors reeled off my own injuries, I felt like I was reliving it all over again.
The court also heard how, after the bludgeoning, Thomas had ridden his motorbike to his mother’s house, in an attempt to give himself an alibi.
Then, he’d enlisted his partner, Gioanna Edwards, 48, to help burn the axe, clothing and goods stolen from my home, including our ID, in an attempt to cover his tracks.
She’d pleaded guilty to assisting an offender.
Sickeningly, after calling his brother to tell him what he’d done, he tried to frame Beau as the one who’d attacked us.
Thankfully, the judge Justice David Lovell saw through that lie, finding Thomas guilty of a lesser charge of two counts of causing serious harm with intent to cause serious harm.
It didn’t seem nearly enough for wrecking mine and Neil’s lives.
Justice Lovell said of Wescott, ‘You surprised and brutally attacked two people who could offer little or no resistance.’
That July I returned to court, with the support of Nigel, to see Thomas Robert Stapleton-Wescott, 36, sentenced to 14 years, with a non-parole period of 11 years and three months.
For her role in the crime, Gioanna Edwards was sentenced to one year, one month and 14 days’ imprisonment, suspended upon entering a 12-month good behaviour bond.
Now, I need a walking stick and wheelchair, and it’s unlikely that my memory will ever improve.
I don’t understand why Wescott carried out such a brutal attack, destroying my life and Neil’s.
But I won’t let it break me. It’s brought me much closer to my family. I’m so thankful for their love and support, and that of my fishing club.
I feel lucky to be alive.
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