Chris Daniher

If he was in the ear reach of Dad, Dad would yell out, can you bring me over the wrench, Neil?

And Neil would turn up with two spinners.

Dad would grumble under his breath and finally he would get the wrench.

But Neil would look at me with a wry smile.

He knew what he was doing.

There was another little...

project that we used to do was rock collecting and my mum would say to dad, can you just get the kids out of their house?

So dad would say, let's go, we're collecting rocks.

He'd put the trailer on the back of the ute and we had one particular paddock that was a problem.

There were seven of us running behind the trailer, throwing rocks in the trailer.

We'd done a deal before we started.

We said, well, what's in it for us, dad?

And dad said, one set of rock.

So off we went.

We filled up the first trailer.

We filled up the second.

Then the next thing we know, the trailer hit something and there was a yell.

Neil had thrown himself under the trailer, broken his leg.

He said, I'm not doing this anymore for one cent a rock.

He had a way of getting out of things.