Daily Archives: 2007-01-13

Nice weather but a day of fencing spoiled comprehensively by a late afternoon car crash in the Avenue – 50m west of our new entrance. A young male sole occupant of a red saloon died when his car hammered into one of the oaks at speed, bursting into flames. We were out on the homestead – orchard boundary and I was chainsawing when Karola stopped me and said she’d heard an enormous crash. We went to investigate and could see the flames and wreckage from our gateway; two cars and some people were already there but didn’t seem to be able to get close; I called 112 just in case. The 112 call was answered after about 4 rings but the fire/ambulance/police dispatcher couldn’t raise the ambulance or fire people for about 3 minutes, which felt like a very long time. Just as I got through a fire engine arrived and they put the fire out in seconds – despite flames 2-4 metres in the air. Police are still on the scene and the road is closed for the night. About as unlike a James Bond movie as you can get, makes you feel quite sick; after the initial flap about what, if anything, you can do to get any survivor out, you worry – could it be someone in a family we know – were any of our geese/sheep/dog out on the road – how many people, any other vehicles involved, and so on.

Just as when we left New Zealand in 1974, deaths in cars figure on the news a couple of times most weeks, more on public holidays and long weekends; since we’ve been back in New Zealand Tony Fletcher’s sister was killed on the way from Wellington to Hastings and Rob Haylock was killed over near Wanganui – in neither case did their car cause the accident. I try hard to travel between Monday and Thursday since hearing (from a meeting I was in in 2001 with the Assistant Commissioner of NZ Police) that these are the statistically safer times.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 19°C—25°C; 2.6mm rain [81.1]