That sounds awful - I'm glad your DH sounds like he is going to be okay but ICU means it must be pretty serious!

Have you looked at his super fund? Some of them have and injury or sickness insurance component automatically and will pay 75% of his wages for up to 6 months (or something like that) until he is better. Otherwise there should have been some kind of insurance covering the work site and that should at least cover the ambulance costs ... whether it is worth the excess and who is responsible for that, I don't know. Most work sites have to have some kind of insurance paid for by someone.

If your DH is the one responsible for the insurance or workcover, it might not be worth him claiming anything though unless you have exorbodent medical bills to cover. Making a workcover claim means that Occupational Health and Safety will come out and do an assessment and sometimes these can be ongoing for 12 month where the employer has to show they are making improvements and policies to insure there is little chance of it happening again. Insurance premiums will also go up and could end up costing him a lot more money. It is someone else's workcover that he is covered under, it would be worthwhile to claim because those things aren't his responsibility then.

I hope you DH makes a quick recovery. How scary