KEY POINTS:
Caver Michael Brewer says he cannot remember the accident which injured him.
He said after he was hauled to safety early today that he had been knocked out for about 45 minutes.
Mr Brewer added: "The next thing I remember was lying in the lap of the guy who was with us with a rescue blanket over me trying to remember where I was and what was happening."
Cheers broke out at the cave entrance as the Motueka GP emerged on a stretcher this morning.
He had spent nearly three days deep beneath Takaka Hill.
His wife Sarah and their daughters - Anna, 15, and Alex, 13 - were waiting as rescuers left behind the dark cave into a clear, moonlit night at 1.15am.
Mrs Brewer said: "He's pretty tired. Understandably as he hasn't slept for three days. It's been a pretty long ordeal but now he's out and that's great. We heard him before we saw him. He was just talking to the rescuers about whether he'd fit through holes."
After a brief checkup, Dr Brewer was taken by helicopter to Nelson Hospital. He suffered suspected cracked ribs, concussion and a broken pelvis when he was hit by falling rocks about 5pm on Saturday.
Paul Brewer, brother of the rescued caver, said it was a wonderful feeling to have him out of the cave he had been trapped in for two days.
He said members of Mr Brewer's family around New Zealand waited up last night to get calls from Mr Brewer's wife Sarah that the torturous rescue was over.
"His two daughters Anna and Alix went into the cave with Sarah and they assisted in carrying him out for that last stage, which was lovely," said Mr Brewer.
About 50 rescuers worked around the clock to move him towards the cave entrance. By 10.30pm exhausted rescuers said they had manoeuvred him to within 40m of the surface, at the foot of a vertical shaft.
It took nearly three hours to haul Dr Brewer up the final pitch, with a rock fall slowing the rescue team's progress.
Kevin Jose, who came from Auckland to help in the rescue, said Dr Brewer was constantly talking to the team, and even giving them a bit of cheek by saying things such as "why are you going so slowly?"
He said moving Dr Brewer through the tightest parts of the cave system was challenging.
"We had to move rocks to get him through."
Fellow rescuer Ian Millar, from Nelson, said Dr Brewer was an "ideal patient" in trying conditions.
"It's just very slow going, very torturous, and a lot of tight places where you can't get around the stretcher. There might be a gap in the floor and somebody dives down there so they can put it across their back ... just physical.
"Michael was using his arms to fend the stretcher off the walls where he had to. He was in good spirits.
"It was pretty hard on him at times, and we had to get him on his side and things like that, which is not easy."
The 47-year-old - an experienced caver - and three friends went into the Green Link-Middle Earth cave system in Golden Bay on Saturday for a day of caving.
That evening Dr Brewer was hit by a chunk of rock a metre long and 30cm wide, which sent him tumbling 2m to the ground 400m underground and about 3km from the cave entrance.
Mrs Brewer, who is also an experienced caver, said he was climbing down a sloping rock when the rock hit him.
"He might have knocked it as he went past or someone at the top of the climb might have knocked it."
Dr Brewer has been on morphine and is described as "chipper and lucid".
Getting him out of the cave was a nightmare for rescuers.
It has several drops of up to 40m, where Dr Brewer - wrapped tightly in a sleeping bag on a stretcher - had been hoisted by ropes, and tight passages through which rescuers passed the stretcher hand to hand in a painstakingly slow process.
Local caver Mike Brien was in the first team that reached Dr Brewer about 11.30am on Sunday.
"We asked him to have a go at walking, and he couldn't, so he's been in a stretcher since," he said.
The teams spent much of yesterday moving Dr Brewer through the two "squeezes" that had prevented a few larger cavers from taking part in the rescue. They communicated through radio wire to a base set up near the cave entrance. Mrs Brewer said: "He was sounding quite cheerful. He said it was either that or cry, so he was going for cheerful."
Mrs Brewer said she didn't expect her husband to hang up his caving boots. "Adventure is a big part of Michael's life and he wouldn't be Michael if he stopped."
- with NZPA, NEWSTALK ZB
