A lot of farms do have their rules and regulations but some farms – like me, leave the helmet in the toolbox, type thing you know what I mean? That was my sort of bad bad attitude I had. Yeah, I'm a convert now, yeah.

My name is George Thompson. I'm a retired farm manager. I had an incident on a quad bike and I qualify still as a tetraplegic and I was given a 20% chance of ever walking again.

It was supposed to be my weekend off, but the person that was supposed to milk rung in sick. So, I was then called upon to go and milk the cows on the Monday morning.

4.30 in the morning, something caught the corner of my eye, and I just looked around and then suddenly I was headfirst into the drain over the handlebars, and my head hit the drain wall. And that's pretty much what I can remember of that bit, yeah.

As far as safety practice goes, I suppose I was a bit naive with that. So just threw the helmet on without doing it up. Y’know, she’ll be right she’ll be right Jack, attitude. You do think some days that you're a bit bulletproof on things and that was pretty much my safety for the morning. So yeah, it was my own silly fault.

I had my phone in my top pocket, which I was going to leave at the cowshed that morning to charge up, but I don't know what made me put it in my pocket. And so after my accident, I managed to stand up. Then I felt my legs give way on me and I slipped down into the drain.

And so I had all these tingling feelings going through my fingers, but I managed to get my phone out of my top pocket and swipe the first number, which I rang the night before and the guy answered. Then I knew that I'd done myself some damage.

What did I have? Three ambulances, one fire engine and a helicopter. When you're lying in the drain, it's like an eternity. Yeah. I held my neck like that because I didn't quite know a thing, then the joker that came to my rescue, Darryl Ryan, he held it until the paras got there. Two weeks in Christchurch Hospital and then transferred out to Burwood for rehabilitation.

When the doctor came and saw me. And he just told me that I've got a 20% chance of walking, yeah. And I met my physio and she was a scary lady. We became a team, yeah. Yeah, Quinn was her name. She was very good. You virtually learn to sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up. Those are your first learnings.

It did change my thought on bikes, but I still ride them. I'm much more cautious, what I do now. I hope that some people learn from what I did, ‘cos I was that blasé farmer.

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