Thanks for all the prayers and messages we’ve received. How incredibly heartwarming and comforting to be surrounded with such care.
Let me fill in the details. We were heading for Hamilton on Saturday in two vans to celebrate the first wedding anniversary of some friends who were actually travelling with us in the second van (along with Barbara, Charmagne, Kaitlyn & Grace). Hamilton was the venue as that is where the bride hails from. And that is where a certain Christian Dairy Farmer (Paul & Helen) had just dressed down a couple of big moo cows for us to Bar B Q and eat our fill of marinated fillet steaks.
Perfect weather and driving conditions, little traffic on the road…it really was pleasurable motoring. Jeremiah was driving the big white Toyota Hiace van with myself in the passenger front seat and Jedediah squeezed between us. In the back seat, Alanson was lying out having a snooze and all the luggage for us 4 and the 6 in the second van was in the end part of the van. Just as we approached the wee village of Owhango on State Highway 4 (just a wee way south of Taumarunui) and coming out of a large sweeping curve to the right, the van left the road and we found ourselves on the grass shoulder which also dropped away lower than the level of the road. In an effort to get back on the road, Jeremiah turned to the right before letting the van slow down. The effect was to shoot us back onto the road, across our lane and into the on-coming lane. To correct that, he turned back to the left. The van rolled
onto its right side, then onto its top and then onto the left side, all the while sliding at speed down the centre of the road, with the nose of the van pointing straight down the road, right on top of the white line in the centre. Alanson found himself sitting on what used to be a side door window with the tar seal ripping his rear end away. It took his pants but left all his skin. He also got various cuts to his feet and hands plus a cut at the back of his head and a big graze near the right kidney. Jeremiah’s right collar bone got broken by the seat belt and his right shoulder was burned by the heat of the tar seal and glass ripping off his sweatshirt’s shoulder but leaving his skin pretty much intact. Jedediah got a wee graze on one
elbow and two fingertips. Something hit the top of my head making two slices, one requiring 8 stitches and the other needing 2. And my left index finger took a whack turning it black and blue and swelling, but not so much as a scuff mark.
The front window of the van, being now vertical and without glass, was like a handy five foot high door through which three of us stepped out, and Alanson got out the back “door”. I looked like a crash victim with the red stuff running freely over my bald head and down my face. Alanson got me to the side of the road and we both sat down, he holding my wound. I really had next to no pain and was just thinking what a hassle this was all going to be. Barbara and the rest were checking on us and shifting our gear off the road. A motorist stopped and was very helpful with providing shade, a first aid kit and talking to me “to keep me awake.” I was feeling fine, but in answer to his questions, I got to explain a lot about home education! Two farmers in the paddocks came running, the male directing traffic and the female, a nurse as well as a dirt farmer, got straight onto me. The next person to come into my view identified himself as a doctor, probed us four in a professional manner, pronounced us AOK and took off. Then came the rescue firemen who assisted the farmer/nurse in assessing us all and in cleaning me up a bit. Police turned up and gave ol’ Jeremiah the third degree…they were nice about it and advised him of the possible legal scenarios coming up. When St Johns arrived, there wasn’t much for them to do, but load us in the Ambulance and take us to Taumarunui Hospital.
I guess we spent a couple hours there. The staff was just great, all over us doing this and that as apparently it gets pretty quiet there at Taumarunui Hospital. They have a brand new x-ray machine and the operator was having a ball doing Jeremiah’s collar bone and taking multiple images of my bruised finger (fair enough) but also of my neck for some unknown reason. They never told us anything about the x-ray images they got. But every Dr and nurse who came near me seemed to have a blood pressure cuff to put on me and then read the riot act about how high the numbers were.
Steve drove the two hours down from Hamilton to collect us from the hospital and take us all back to wife Linda, Paul & Helen, the six daughters from these two families and those mountains of steaks waiting to be Bar B Qued and devoured. But they had to leave me behind, as the Drs decided I needed to spend the night for observation.
My room mate turned out to be about as Kiwi a bloke as you could find: life-long forestry worker who started out chopping down Rimu, Tawa, Matai, etc., camping in the hills, eating wild venison, wild pigs and Wood Pigeons. He’s done the deer culling from helicopters, dealt in exporting feral venison, goat meat & pork to Germany and got his own pilot’s license. At 68 years he was still driving bulldozers dragging felled logs to the trucks. About three months ago he set the brake on the dozer on a steep hill, stood on the rear tracks to unhitch the wire ropes when the dozer took off backwards. His chaps got caught in the tracks and his right leg was mangled to bits before a stump caused the dozer to stop. His mate got on the dozer and drove it off, confirming the brake had been set, then applied a tourniquet. The grace of God, the tourniquet and his all-round fitness saved his life, but he would only say he was lucky. The helicopter from Taupo got to him before the ambulance from Taumaruni could find its way along the 12 miles of logging road.
Next morning, Sunday, Paul drove down to collect me. We had some great fellowship on the drive back and arrived in time to hear Steve’s sermon on I Peter 1:3. And then, believe it or not, we Bar B Qued these fantastic fillet steaks that had been marinating for an extra 24 hours! Talk about melt-in-your-mouth, Trev! But it was all too short, and 8 of us who’d come up had to go back. We left Charmagne and Jedediah as they were off to Auckland airport and then to Australia on Monday, thanks to either Steve’s or Paul’s taxi service! On the way home, we stopped at Owhango Motors to see the old van one last time and at the crash site to look at the tracks in the grass and skid marks (and Police spray paint marks) all over the road.
Got home to Palmerston North at 10:30pm, about 33 hours after the crash. At 5am Monday, six and a half
hours later, Barbara and I were off doing a delivery run between Marton and Palmerston North, a little business our family just started doing six days a week. And that night at 7:30 I was attending a prayer meeting in Feilding with a very receptive attitude!
So the Lord did some quiet, unobtrusive miracles in preserving us through a 100kmph roll along tar seal with no traffic coming the other way and no obstacles to wrap ourselves around. We’ve been evaluating the whole thing and asking and trying to answer the many questions that come, fully convinced that God ordained every detail of it as part of our maturing and sanctification programme.
Certainly life is very fragile; God holds every detail in His hands; we need to be about His business.
Great celebrations in our family today as my Great Uncle Arthur (Uncle Arthur to everyone) turned 100 today. His sister, my grandmother, Celia Jane Elizabeth Angus Hay (nee Wilson) (known as Gran Hay to everyone) died at 99 (in her 100th year as she used to say). My mother died at 57 of cancer so is not carrying on this long life tradition. I am 58 now so look forward to many years ahead of me to enjoy my grandchildren - so far Cheyenh and Dusti (in Illinois, USA) and Natalie and ...... (in Victoria, Australia)
Centenarian Arthur Wilson still regularly does his nephew's lawns. Photo by Gerard O'Brien.
Arthur Wilson has just had his lawn-mowing "contract" rolled over for another five years.
That means the remarkable Oamaru man will be 105 when the longstanding arrangement is reviewed by his nephew, Don Hay.
Mr Wilson, who turns 100 today, regularly mows Mr Hay's lawns, using a ride-on lawn mower, with great skill.
"He's a very fussy man, this joker, in everything he does. I like to make a good job, myself. I'm more interested in doing a good job than leaving a little line of grass behind," Mr Wilson said.
And he always got "excellent" reports from blood tests - "so I might cut his blinking lawns after 100", he said with a chuckle.
Still fiercely independent and with a quick wit, Mr Wilson lives alone, cooks for himself and tends a vegetable garden.
He painted an 80m picket fence in his late 80s, made a tomato house in his 90s, was catching lambs at tailing until he was 95 and drove a car until he was 96.
He now rides a mobility scooter and, while Mr Hay picks him up for his lawn-mowing duties, he did once decide to take the back roads on his scooter from his north Oamaru home to Mr Hay's property on T. Y. Duncan Rd.
He conceded it was a bit too far as he "nearly ran out of juice".
Born in Christchurch, Mr Wilson was the first hired cowboy on Longslip Station, near Omarama, starting work in 1926 aged 17.
He recalled the hard, cold winters, icicles on his woollen blankets from his breath, along with trying to defrost boots at night.
At night, he would put a river stone in the fire and use it as a hot-water bottle in an old sock.
"With the hardest of the black frosts, someone used to ride around the ewe blocks looking at only the sheltered dark gullies for ewes frozen to the ground - the weaker ones used to get caught and died.
"Sometimes, in the hard winters, the boss, mate and I would be on the go looking at all blocks and the hell it was hard work," he said.
He spent nine days on the road driving sheep from Longslip to Duntroon and once took a mob of sheep through the main street of Kurow.
"They all went crook about a wee bit of s... going into the shop. It was not a very big mob, only about 500-odd."
Asked about his longevity, Mr Wilson said his late sister Celia Hay (Barbara's grandmother - Gran Hay) "put some sense" into him when he was young.
"She said, you must eat good, plain food . . . and keep that thing on top [pointing to his head] . . . in working order or the rest of the body will follow suit," he said.
Mr Wilson said it was important to stay active.
"Get out and do something even if you don't do it and just walk around the block.
"Keep thinking of something else to do. You can't sit in the chair all the time .... you're only ruining your body. I try and get out as much as I can."
Mr Wilson and his late wife Ruth had eight children, of which six survive.
He is looking forward to celebrating his birthday this weekend, saying it will be "superb" to catch up with family.
Craig and Barbara Smith and their 8 home educated children and 3 Grandchildren: Genevieve (born 1980) and Pete (married 2008 with Natalie 2008 and...); Zachariah (1981) and Megan (married 2005 with Cheyenh 2007 and Dusti 2009); Alanson (1984); Charmagne (1987); Jeremiah (born Mitchell 1992 and now adopted); Jedediah (born 1997 and now adopted); Kaitlyn (born 2000 and now adopted); Grace (born 2005 guardianship).
We use a Biblical/Hebrew/Classical approach to our home education.
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