Travel insurance was the last thing on Emma Carey's mind as she parachuted from plane in Switzerland while on a European adventure of a life time.
But her policy proved a godsend when things went belly-up.
The chute didn't open properly and the 20-year-old was crushed under the weight of her unconscious instructor.
Travel insurance covered the cost of getting her mother and sister to her hospital bedside as well as two lots of surgery for her back and pelvis.
Despite suffering a spinal cord injury, Ms Carey has learned to walk again.
Without travel insurance her family would have been up for close to $140,000 in expenses.
"I have no idea how I ever would have been able to afford that," she told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop used Ms Carey's sobering story as as a lesson for young travellers especially ahead of schoolies' week celebrations.
"If you cannot afford travel insurance, you really can't afford to travel," she said.
Eight per cent of travellers don't take out travel insurance, equating to 800,000 uninsured overseas trips.
Those aged 18-29 were the worst offenders even though they were most likely to get into trouble from risk-taking activities abroad.
Ms Bishop urged them to look at exclusion clauses and obtain a policy no matter whether they were travelling to developed or undeveloped countries.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade dealt with 15,740 consular cases in 2015-16, according to its Consular State of Play report released on Wednesday.
"The Australian government is not a hospital, it is not a hotel, it is not an internet cafe and our consular officials can not just whisk you out of jail," Ms Bishop warned, urging personal responsibility for behaviour overseas.
In light of the "exuberance" of a group of Formula One fans in Malaysia - dubbed the "Budgie Nine" - Ms Bishop urged travellers to read information about local laws and customs of overseas countries on the Smarttraveller website.
She lamented the workload for embassy staff was increasing.
* The number of Australians arrested overseas increased to 1551 in 2015-16.
* Australian deaths overseas increased to 1516.
* Hospital visits were up by 214 to 1667.
* Theft cases were up 172 to 1238.
Jen Neilson, 25, learnt the hard way about the importance of travel insurance in June.
On a whim she extended her Bali trip but not her travel insurance and her family was left $50,000 out of pocket when she got methanol poisoning and parts of her pancreas had to be removed in emergency surgery.
Her father Andrew said his daughter could have died in a matter of six to 12 hours.
"Parents, family and friends need to be critically aware that when you've got someone overseas, it's not just on their heads but on the family," he said, recounting how the family scrambled to fined the money to pay the medical bills.
