He was a one off, Jack. He was really a wonderful kid. He had a bit of a thing about giving himself some nicknames, Jack, he like refer himself as the king of the jungle. He was sheriff of this town. He was called bollard because we all know what a bollard is. And he was just an amazing kid as a young fella, he loved his sport, he played footy. We didn't really get into cricket that much, but he loved his footy. They would both. Both boys, Mitchell and Jack, they were both Junior Black Belt at Karate, which was pretty impressive, I think in some regards, Jack had one hand up protecting his face and I like to believe that was Jack's defence. He put his hand up to save his face because he was good looking like his own man. You can cut that out, but no, Jack with good. And he, he was hard working, and he just lived life to the fullest. There was just something about him that he could move people.
We came here on the night Jack passed, and there was probably a couple of hundred people turned up in the backyard. We had another function at a shed where all the boys were. There was 500 odd people turned up to that and it was near a thousand turned up to his funeral. And so, we hired this convention centre thing, and I thought, oh have gone overboard here?! But no, he filled it. He filled it, the boy and he was just amazing kid.
Well, on the day of the incident, I was on my way home to have a sleep because I was working night shift that night. So, I headed home and I only got to up the road a bit and my friend Kelly rang me and told me that geez, something's going on up, at Delacombe and I'm thinking, Oh yeah, yeah, nothing much and that sort of thing. And then he rang back again and again and, and he said, you better get up there and have a look.
So, I thought, oh we'll go up and have a look. So, I headed up to Delacombe Town Centre and I got the intersection there and there was just, it was like, like a war zone. There was police everywhere. There was fire trucks, there was ambulances, there was the ambulance chopper, was parked in the middle of the road. And I was just blown away. I was stunned. I tried then to get into the site and was held up by a policeman that was on the side of the road. I explained my situation, who I was, and I had a feeling that Jack could have been involved in this incident. So, he got on the radio, and he got back to me and said yes, it’s, it is your son that's trapped. But he's alive. I was told he’d survived, and they were moving him to Melbourne in the helicopter.
We were told Jack would be all right. We didn't really, you know, we come home, and we got an overnight bag for Jack. We waited until our other son, Mitchell got home. We all got together, and we said, righto, we've got everything. Well, we'll head down to the hospital. So, we’re on our way down to Melbourne hospital, we get a phone call from my friend Kelly again, who was already at the Melbourne hospital, he said, you’ve got to get here boy’s sick. They're describing him as the sickest boy in the state. And we thought that Jack was all right, but we didn't realise the, the trouble that Jack was in.
So, we that threw some real pressure on us, and that. But we got down to the, the royal the Royal Melbourne Hospital and they were operating on Jack and they had to leave the poor boy with his stomach open because they couldn't close him up because they couldn't stabilise him. So poor Jack's laying there under a tin sheet, I reckon it was one of those silver blankets and you know, like that just…You think, he can't be warm. But they had heater’s on, and I had warm air blowing on him. He couldn't clot. He was losing blood as quick as they were putting in, into him. They had helicopters bringing blood in. There was 62 litres of blood they pumped into that boy, and they couldn't clot it. So, they took him back. The next morning, they operated again.
And we we'd spent the night at the hospital, along with probably 20 of Jack's family and friends, We were sitting there and waiting, and then all of a sudden, we seen a doctor, a nurse, another doctor, a couple of FLO’s There was probably about four or five of them. They come walking out of the intensive care area. And I knew I knew at that moment that Jack hadn’t made it because there was just so many people coming to, to, to assist us.
And it was just it was heart wrenching just to know that your son hadn’t made it. And we hung around the hospital for a while, and we had to say goodbyes. But one of the things that will never leave me is I had to sign. I had to sign his death certificate, to say that it was Jack identifying him and that...to sign that's something a father shouldn't have to do. And it’s just horrendous to think that you've got to go in. And sign your son's life away, that he’s dead. that's something that'll, that’ll never leave me, taken into an office, sitting down and having to sign that your son's died.
One of the things I think employers should be doing is taking safety seriously. These things cost a lot of money. And being a business, it's all about money. That drives business, if they don’t make money businesses close down. But you cannot take a short cut on safety.
Advice to other families that get caught up in this would be that you have to take notes. You have to ask questions. I was very fortunate that I had Lana alongside us in this, who is very diligent with her note taking, and she has got every note from every meeting that was ever, ever brought up.
So, I'd be saying, ask questions, take notes and seek professional help.
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