The mum of eight felt so sick, in fact, that she retired to bed.

In that moment, more than 600 kilometres away, an almighty bucking bull smashed its horned head into her son Tom’s face.

The force of the impact shattered the 20-year-old’s eye socket, cheekbone and jaw and he was airlifted to the Alfred hospital in Melbourne for surgery.

The result of that five-hour operation was seven plates and 58 screws in Tom’s young face.

A year later we are standing on the dusty grounds of the Chiltern recreation reserve ahead of Sunday’s annual rodeo where Tom will saddle up for the second-division bull ride.

He is reluctant to re-visit the horror of that fateful day in February at Dartmoor Rodeo, in Victoria’s south-west.

“I don’t like to talk about it –  I’ve only just stopped thinking about it,” he says.

“All I remember is being pulled down and then the bull head-butted me.

“I thought I’d just broken my nose.”

But his injuries were significant enough that Tom, a shearer by trade, “didn’t work for a long time”.

It was even harder for him to sit on the sidelines at rodeos during what became a protracted road to recovery.

“He struggled with doing nothing, particularly if he came to watch,” recalls his sister Molly, 16.

“He was told he probably shouldn’t ride bulls again but he always said he would.

“In fact he was talking about going to Hay (rodeo) the week after his operation – it didn’t scare him.”

There’s grudging admiration when Molly speaks of her brother’s determination to get back to his beloved bull-riding.

“Sometimes I get worried about him … but it’s what he wants to do,” she says.

It’s clear a love of rodeo runs through this family’s veins.

Molly is already a seasoned competitor in another of rodeo’s popular pastimes, the barrel racing.

Together with her horse Dusty, she has been galloping her way towards the winner’s podium at a recent string of events.

After strong junior division placings at Wagga, Ballarat, Finley, Hay and Whittlesea rodeos, Molly is hoping she can go one better in front of her home crowd.

But she says it’s the hugely supportive atmosphere of rodeo that she loves the most.

“There are a lot of the same faces at the same events – it’s very friendly and we’re like a big family,” Molly says.

That extended family has played a pivotal role in Tom’s physical – and mental – recovery.

Buoyed by the support of the Chiltern community and rodeo fraternity, Tom focused on getting fit again after the accident.

He’s learned the importance of having both your mind and your body 100 per cent right before stepping into the chute and onto the back a bucking beast weighing hundreds and hundreds of kilograms.

Tom tried to ease himself back into rodeo riding with a couple of bareback bronc events towards the end of 2016.

He bombed out at Warwick – “I’d been out of the game, I wasn’t riding every day and my balance was off”.

Then bad luck struck again when he got hung up at Tarcutta Rodeo, requiring surgery to pin broken bones in his foot.

“I tried to go back shearing but I buggered it (the foot) up so then I decided I really had to give myself time to heal,” Tom says.

Once his body made a full recovery, Tom knew he had to properly regain his balance and riding fitness.

More recently he has been working with well-known livestock contractor Garry McPhee, riding young horses and, most importantly, learning how to ride bulls better.

His dogged determination is starting to pay off.

After falling off a bull at Ballarat earlier this year, Tom ran second in the second-division bull ride at Hay on February 18 and then won at Narrandera the following weekend.

He’s fit and he’s fearless.

“I’m feeling heaps more confident and I’m in a better head space,” Tom says.

“If you think about getting hurt, you will get hurt.

“You’ve got to have mental strength as well as physical strength.”

The return to form doesn’t surprise those who know him best.

Tom previously claimed the rookie bull-riding prize for the Southern Cross series in 2015 after only a relatively short time in the sport.

“He has a natural talent for it,” friend and Chiltern rodeo organiser Kelvin Duke said during an interview after last year’s accident.

“Psychologically his mind is where it should be, he's got a positive approach.

“There's a lot to think about in eight seconds.”

Everyone – including the doctors who treated him – knew calling it quits was never on the cards for this young man.

The day Tom went head to head with the bull he wasn’t wearing a helmet (a safety measure compulsory in junior rodeo competitions).

He does now.

But he admits his mum still doesn’t want to watch him ride.

“She worries,” he says. 

“I think she would have liked me to give it up. But I just love it too much.”

Come Sunday when the gate bursts open for Tom at Chiltern, there’ll be no shortage of supporters cheering him on.

Ride ‘em cowboy.