Inside story of how Daniel Andrews’ leadership was engulfed by insane conspiracy theories after he broke his back and nearly died in holiday fall

Dan Andrews has been at the center of some of Australia’s most bizarre political conspiracy theories after he slipped and fell on the wooden steps of his holiday home.

The Victorian premier suffered serious back injuries, six broken ribs and collapsed lungs during the fall of March 9, 2021, and his wife Catherine feared he would die.

Mr Andrews was rushed to hospital from his holiday home in Sorrento, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, and needed three months’ leave to recover.

But the incident sparked wild and false speculation about what some claimed actually happened, with theories spreading like wildfire through the encrypted messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram.

The crazy theories spread around the world to American QAnon sites like 4-Chan, with some sharing a series of wild scenarios for the supposed real reason for his injury.

Some of the baseless and false claims, for which there was no evidence, claimed he was being targeted by union bosses enraged by Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Others claimed without substantiation that the Prime Minister had fallen into the nearby home of a high-profile Victorian businessman and was then ambushed and attacked.

The boss involved – whose son is a friend of Mr Andrews – is said to have sought legal advice on how to sue over the false allegations circulating online.

Mr Andrews was also falsely accused of getting into an argument with a leading executive of a multinational company at another dinner.

Both men were able to prove that they were not with Mr Andrews that evening and had nothing to do with his injuries.

Central to the false conspiracy theories were suggestions that Andrews had fallen out over his Belt and Road deal with China, which has since been scrapped.

But despite the verifiable denials, the false claims continued to plague the Prime Minister.

“Start telling the truth about why you were pushed while you were at the party,” one person posted on the politician’s Instagram feed.

“How’s the Belt and Road deal going, Dan? Selling us out to the communists. Who pushed you down those stairs?’ another wrote.

The various theories maintained that Mr Andrews may have suffered injuries more consistent with being kicked repeatedly while on the ground.

“Who beat up Dan Andrews?” asked one of the posts on a Queensland blog fueling the conspiracy theories.

The plotters disputed the official timeline of the incident, insisting it had actually happened the night before, while Mr Andrews had been at a ‘drinks meeting’.

The Prime Minister pushed back on that claim at the time, denying that he was at a meeting and that there was any suggestion he was drunk or hungover when he fell.

‘I hadn’t seen anyone. “It hadn’t been ‘a late night’ in the sense I think you mean,” he said. ‘It was just one of those things. You can be incredibly unlucky.’

According to the online army of disbelievers, even photos of Mr Andrews recovering in hospital are believed to have been falsely manipulated.

“I heard you got your head bashed in by people after what you did to the people of Victoria,” one person claimed on an Instagram photo of Andrews as he recovered.

“That’s why you hired Photoshop artists to put your head on someone else’s body

“This is also why we haven’t seen your real face since the incident. We haven’t seen your actual hospital photos.

“And we didn’t hear you talk. Because your head got smashed in.”

The false theories were revived last November when photographs emerged of the beach hut where Mr Andrews fell, revealing the stairs were simply two wooden steps leading to a 40cm high deck.

Known as ‘The Beach House’, the property has three bedrooms and a pool, spa and private gardens with an asking price of $1,000 – $1,443 per night depending on the season.

The prime minister and his wife booked the house for a weeklong vacation over Labor Day weekend with their children Noah, Grace and Joseph.

Dan Andrews’ explanation

Mr Andrews said in 2021 that his foot slipped off the wet first step and he “went airborne”, with the verandah hitting him “right across my shoulder blades”, leaving him in pain, unable to breathe or to shout out.

“I have a briefcase in one hand, an overnight bag in the other and I walked out the front door,” he said at the time.

‘The door slams behind me, I take two steps onto the porch… and when I put my left foot on the step, it just slid off. It’s like it’s happening in slow motion. I thought, ‘I’m in trouble here.’

“I got airborne, boom, and then the front of the porch hit me right on my shoulder blades. I could hear it, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

‘I couldn’t breathe in or out. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t scream for Cath.’

He added: ‘I landed flat on my back and hit the steps directly below the shoulder blades hard, breaking at least five ribs and suffering an acute compression fracture of the T7 vertebra.

‘I was barely able to prevent permanent damage to my spinal cord.

“These are serious injuries that require me to wear a brace every day except when sleeping.”

Paramedics arrived at 7.01am after Andrews’ security detail lifted him off the grass and brought him inside.

The Prime Minister was still in pain, so they cut him out of his favorite golf shirt and placed a morphine IV in his arm to ease the pain.

He was rushed to hospital and remained there until March 15, when he was discharged, but spent more than 100 days largely hidden from the world, recovering long after he returned to work.

Even on April 4, he could only walk 18 minutes a day.

His wife Catherine admitted she thought it could have been his last moments when she heard him groan immediately after the fall.

“It was terrible because you turned blue and I thought you were going to die here in Sorrento in this holiday home,” she said in an interview after he recovered.

“And you looked at me and you felt the same way.”

In an attempt to defuse the wild theories, Ambulance Victoria released a statement repeating the timeline of events that corroborated the Prime Minister’s story.

But privately, some in the prime minister’s inner circle blame an information vacuum immediately after the incident occurred – which produced conflicting stories and minimized his injuries – for initiating the conspiracy theories.

Initially the media was told he had only been taken to hospital for x-rays as a precaution and it took more than six hours for the full extent to be revealed to the public after he was admitted to the intensive care unit at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital.

The state opposition jumped on the rumors and questioned the prime minister last year about the theories circulating online.

Liberal MP Louise Staley asked a long list of questions about the accident and what the Prime Minister did in the lead up to it.

“Victorians need honesty and transparency from Daniel Andrews about the circumstances of his injury,” Ms Staley said.

‘Everyone has the right to privacy about his or her health, but these questions are not about the nature of his injuries, but only about how he suffered those injuries.

“If there is no cover-up, there is no reason not to answer these simple questions.”

Releasing Ambulance Victoria’s statement, then-acting Premier James Merlino said he treated Ms Staley’s questions “with the contempt it deserves”.

“This is how the Liberal Party treats people. No decency. No respect. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.

“You can’t silence conspiracy nuts and if the Liberal Party wants to behave disgracefully, that’s their business.”

“All of these conspiracy theories are completely false and have been addressed before,” a spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

“We have no intention of entertaining them any further.”