When Jane Blackburne heard sirens one morning in 2020, she assumed they were for someone else. They weren’t, they were for her husband George, who had crashed his quad bike into a drain and broken his neck in two places.
Don't take any shortcuts. Sometimes, you know, think before you do something. Is this the right option? I hope we never have to go through that again.
My name’s Jane Blackburne. I was a nurse, gave that up, and now I do massage beauty therapy. Met George 22 years ago. Yeah, we've had a good life.
I was doing my usual morning chores down in the paddock, picking up horse poo, and doing my usual, and I heard the sirens and I thought, ‘oh, some silly person has had an accident’, carried on doing my thing. And then I got a call from Darryl, who George rung to get him to come round to the farm, to say that he'd had an accident. So, I went down there, and that's when he'd got all the ambulances and helicopters all there.
When I saw... them all there I mean, you do think the worst. But then when he said, he just kept saying, 'sorry. And nothing you can do, it’s happened. And they were just, yeah. I was just by his head and just talking to him. And then he said, 'I can't feel anything'. But he had his hands. I knew he was in the right place. But it’s that initial shock you just don't really know, how bad – well, you sort of do, but you don’t probably want to think it's going to be that bad. nd then once he was sort of, you know, they were all working on him and then he was taken in the helicopter. I think that's when it sort of hit that, you know, things were bad.
It was hard because he got awesome help at Burwood and then once you leave there, it's like – not all the support is gone, but you're on your own. I mean, I'm lucky I could do a lot of things for him and he could do a lot of stuff for himself too.
I think sometimes the other partner, sort of gets forgotten about a little bit. And, you know it's always about the person who's had the accident, not about the person who's actually there doing other things for them.
We get on well together. We have our moments. You know, sometimes I could walk out the door and say, that's it I've had enough because of what's happened. But then you think, well, you just got to get on with it and we’ve got two, you know grandchildren who love him to pieces and just want to spend all the time with us and him. Go hunting. You know, they just love it. So we're very blessed to have that.
So I think that's what keeps him motivated and doing it. I think we just have to all thank our lucky stars.
End of transcript.
She says partners of injured people tend to get forgotten about, as the focus is naturally on those who’ve been hurt.
Jane’s story is a reminder that workplace incidents don’t just affect the person injured; they affect whānau, too, with consequences that can last a lifetime.
Real stories from people affected by farm injuries
Hear from Jane's husband George about his injuries, and possum trapper Murray Hutchings who rolled his quad bike down a steep gully.
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