A YACKANDANDAH farmer, hearing about a possible ute accident, jumped on his quad bike and raced off to check.

But on a steep dirt track, his gears failed, the forces of gravity increased his speed and obstacles loomed.

“I had to jump at 80 kilometres or hit the tree,” he recalls.

He jumped, but this lesser evil still proved pretty bad.

Instead of celebrating his daughter’s birthday that day, he found himself in hospital and underwent surgery to reconstruct his left foot.

His recovery took “a good 12 months”.

More than six years later, the farmer knows lack of familiarity with this particular terrain contributed to the accident.

“Hindsight’s a marvellous teacher,” he says.

But he appreciates getting the chance to learn that lesson.

“A nurse said on the night of the accident, ‘You’ve given your daughter a great birthday present — you’re still alive’,” he says.

Not every farming family is as lucky.

The industry so much part of the Australian psyche remains one of the country’s most dangerous.

According to the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety, 163 people died from farm accidents nationwide between 2012 and 2014.

A further 283 suffered injuries over that period.

In the first three months of this year, 11 have been killed with three of those aged 15 years and under.

Farmsafe Australia says on-farm injury deaths have fallen significantly from an average of 154 fatalities a year from 1989 to 1992.

But few would argue there’s work still to be done.

Quad bikes and tractors account for many deaths and injuries, both on and off the farm.

Of 94 injuries recorded around Australia in 2014, 49 related to a quad bike.

Bethanga farmer David Elder has always been quick to remind his sons to wear helmets when riding motorbikes or similar. But two years ago, at the end of a hot day of hard work, well, he wasn’t.

A serious accident on his quad bike caused seven fractures and a brain injury requiring months of hospital treatment and rehabilitation in Melbourne and Albury.

“I’m just glad to be here at the end of the day,” he says this week.

Describing himself as “95 per cent” now, Mr Elder says still he can get very tired and struggle with his balance and short-term memory.

Since his injuries, he’s changed some of his practices on the farm.

“I like to think about things a lot more and how I do them,” he says.

“I think we push ourselves sometimes.”

Mr Elder says farmers work over wide areas and occasionally just want to get the job done then and there.

“I’ve been guilty of doing that in the past,” he says.

“You know you should go back and get that piece of gear and you sometimes don’t.”

Mr Elder says he’s aware of recent fatal accidents involving quad bikes and feels for the grieving families.

“My heart goes out to them,” he says.

“The thing I say to people on farms is take care of each other and think about the safety issues because they’re so really important.”

WorkSafe Victoria head of operations and hazardous injuries Melinda Collinson says farmers face many risks in their workplace.

“The work can be heavy and awkward and it can involve working alone as well as long hours,” she says.

“Unguarded augers, farm machinery, quad bikes and unpredictable animal behaviour are also part of daily life.”

Ms Collinson says many injuries result from forceful or repetitive lifting, carrying, pushing and pulling.

“Machinery and attachments that are used incorrectly, poorly maintained and inadequately guarded is still the biggest problem on farms,” she says.

“Farmers are practical and creative but machinery should only be used for the purpose it’s intended.”

WorkSafe Victoria figures for the North East show a gradual downward trend in agricultural accident claims over the past five years, from 72 in 2010 to 58 last year. With 334 claims made in total, 94 related to “falls, trips and slips” and 95 to “being hit by moving objects”.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Peter Tuohey believes farm safety is improving but he’s concerned by the number of older farmers having accidents.

“It’s familiarity with what they’re doing,” he says. “No problems there but they’re not as agile as they once used to be.”

Therefore jobs that were simple when younger aren’t as easy as the years go by and the risks increase if farmers don’t adjust their habits.

Mr Tuohey says with farms being homes as well as workplaces, people need to be aware of their obligations to both their families and staff.

“The next generation is doing it, usually they have a partner to help them,” he says.

NSW Farmers director Richard Chamen knows too well what can happen if you take safety for granted, having crushed his left hand in a windmill accident seven years ago.

The man he was working with suggested using a chain that ended up not fit for purpose.

“He took a short cut and the short cut didn’t work,” he says.

Six months of healing followed, including pins in the hand for up to 12 weeks. Mr Chamen has also been kicked by cows and whacked by chains during his 25 years as a farmer.

“I think I’m a crash test dummy,” he laughs.

But more seriously, he’s seen neighbours killed in tractor and quad bike accidents and urges people to take care.

“Do a mental SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of what you’re going to be doing and if you could be injured,” he says. “People should be more aware of what they’re doing, think and plan.

“Never be afraid to ask for help.”

Mr Chamen, 61, says he makes sure he wears safety gear like gloves, helmets and ear muffs as needed and knows his limits.

“If there’s a good safe way of doing it, even if I’ve got to pay someone to come and help me, it makes life so much easier,” he says.

By ELIZA ADAMTHWAITE

IT’S been 19 years since my Uncle Alan died on his farm.

I thought that with time passing I would be able to recall the details without emotion.

But as I write this down and talk to Dad about the details, the tears quickly well up.

I remember my piano teacher picking my sister and I up early from primary school. It wasn’t piano lesson day so I didn’t understand why we were going to her house but because I was scared of her, I didn’t dare ask.

Now I understand that my teacher picked us up early so that our parents could break the news to us, rather than anyone who had heard the whispers around town.

Mum and Dad walked into my teacher’s lounge room and told us tearfully that Uncle Alan died in an accident on his farm. 

I don’t think they explained the details there on the spot but they emerged later.

Uncle Alan and his wife had been working in the machinery shed. He asked his wife to back the tractor up to a grouper trailer, which he would hook on. 

But we think her foot must have slipped off the clutch pedal, which allowed the tractor to back up and pin my uncle against the shed wall.

She wasn’t able to get the tractor off him and had to ring a neighbour for help. 

He died of internal injuries at the scene. 

My parents weren’t able to get to the farm until much later.

In the meantime, two neighbours attended to the tractor and the shed for the sake of my family.

While my uncle’s wife had counselling, as did my sister and I at school, the neighbours who were confronted with the scene and my parents did not. 

Dad says that only time has been able to heal the grief of losing his brother in such horrific circumstances.

“It was a terrible time for us for a long time afterwards,” he says.

“But I think of it less as the time passes.”

The tractor is now on my parents’ farm — my uncle’s wife wanted to get rid of it.

But Dad says he’s not worried about using it. I’ve driven it myself, with care, and have wondered how it all transpired.

While it’s not an easy tractor to drive, Dad says he’s not superstitious or paranoid about it.

The accident, though, has affected how he operates tractors.

“It’s pretty common for fellas to stand behind a tractor with a drawbar pin while someone else backs it up but I’m now very careful about that and tell other people to stand well clear,” he says.

Uncle Alan’s death was the third farm death within eight days in the Kerang district in Victoria’s north-west.

A three-year-old boy died when he fell out of the back of a ute on our neighbour’s Quambatook farm while an older man was killed when a bale of hay crushed him on a property near Koondrook on the same day.

It was an incredibly traumatic time for our district.

A couple of years later a neighbour and his friend accidentally pushed an auger into a power line, which resulted in serious injuries while my father-in-law’s school friend was killed when he slipped into a hay baler a few years ago.

And then on May 17, 2014, my brother-in-law’s cousin was killed in an ultralight plane crash when he was mustering sheep on a property near Ivanhoe. I cannot describe the effects of that accident on his family.

Farming is something many of us love dearly. We wouldn’t swap the lifestyle for anything else.

But it’s also a dangerous place to work and the consequences can be devastating if we don’t operate machinery carefully.