SNN_August 2023 Issue_web3
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
NEW ZEALAND SPINAL TRUST 8<br />
“Get on With It”<br />
Barry Cardno's incredible story of inspiration and resilience.<br />
CRASH SCENE—The Fletcher topdressing plane crash in which Barry's flying career was ended in an instant.<br />
Barry Cardno has no memory of the moment<br />
when his life changed forever on 8 May 1995.<br />
Barry was 21-years old, from Dunedin and<br />
was involved in a plane crash near Taupō<br />
while working as a commercial agricultural<br />
pilot. He became paralysed from the waist<br />
down, but the accident hasn't held him back<br />
from living life to the fullest.<br />
We caught up with the 49-year-old to reflect on his<br />
accident, being inspired by the Guinea Pig Club and the<br />
incredible feeling of getting back in the air again.<br />
Take me back to the day of your accident,<br />
what happened?<br />
I can’t remember the crash. But I remember getting up<br />
that morning, it was a fine day, as I set off to work with<br />
instructions over the phone from my boss. He should have<br />
been in the plane with me or supervising from the<br />
ground. My logbook shows that I had flown 30 hours less<br />
than what I should have to be out by myself in what is a<br />
high risk occupation.<br />
After topdressing a hillside at around 70 feet towards the<br />
west, it appears I pulled up to get some clearance before<br />
—Barry Cardno<br />
I was pretty upset. My lifetime<br />
ambitions appeared to have<br />
been shattered in an instant.<br />
turning the plane back on itself to do a run in the opposite<br />
direction. It was a tight triangular block, but pulling out<br />
of the turn the plane’s wings stalled and it slammed into<br />
the ground.<br />
I was lucky to survive. It took rescuers an hour and a half<br />
to get me out of the wreck. Unconscious, I was flown by<br />
rescue helicopter to Waikato Hospital.<br />
What were the doctors concerns on your arrival?<br />
They initially thought my aorta was severed so they<br />
cracked some ribs to get into my chest. It wasn’t. Stitched<br />
up, and in a drug-induced coma, I was wheeled to<br />
Intensive Care, where every two hours nurses rotated me<br />
for pressure relief. However, 27 hours later they said to the<br />
doctors ‘we think he might have a broken back’. They
Change language