Man trapped in New South Wales dam tells of remarkable survival

It was the thought of his young daughters and wife finding him “face down and dead” that kept Daniel Miller alive after his excavator rolled into a muddy dam on his New South Wales property.

Mr Miller, 45, has told 9NEWS in an exclusive interview that he was “determined” to make it out of the dam alive after becoming trapped with his back pinned by the machine’s roll bar.

He spent two hours holding his face just above the waterline.

'Not without a fight': Daniel Miller was rescued after two hours trapped in the dam. (9NEWS)

Mr Miller was tending to some rocks and plants along the dam on his Charlotte Bay property on Tuesday, when the tracks on his excavator shifted, forcing him and the machine into the water.

“I didn’t have time to jump clear so I kind of rode the machine down hoping I would be alright. I hit the water and went under. The next thing I feel is the roll bar come across my back, the dam was very soft, very muddy,” he said.

“I thought s--t I got to get the surface, so I pushed my arms up into the mud and grabbed a mouth full of air. Back pinned, arms up, machine still running.

“The first thing I thought is, ‘I told [my wife] I wouldn’t die first’,” he said.

Kicking into survival mode, Mr Miller, an avid surfer, used his arms as struts to hold his head above water, as though he was doing a push-up.

“I went into an almost robotic state and thought ‘just count to 60, move my arms, readjust’, and just wait and try and be calm and logical. I watched a cricket climb across a piece of grass for two hours.

“I was thinking about how my family is going to find me face down in the dam dead on my property, so that wasn’t going to happen - not without a fight.”

Mr Miller’s wife, Saimaa, called her husband’s efforts to stay alive ‘legendary’.

“He’s a legend, not many people could have survived that,” she said.