Something I'll never ever forget.
He got up. He was going to leave, so he just
hopped up and walked out and give me a kiss, and said
'I love you dad'. He said 'I'll catch up with you later'.
I never really got to talk to him after that.
Dale was always amongst everything with dad.
Always wanting to give him a hand with anything.
Severely energetic, and at the same time, very loyal.
He loved riding the horses.
We'd go out and muster.
We might muster five or six hundred head, and Melissa
would hop out in the lead and Dale would take the wing,
and away we'd go.
I was very protective of him, and then as he
got older he became protective of me.
Dale and I met at a party.
When he walked into the room, his smile would
light up the room.
We put an ad in for a first year apprentice,
and Julie and I sat down and went through it all.
And I saw Dale's name, and I just remember sweeping the
rest into the bin and saying to Wayne
'This is the person you want to be your apprentice'.
He always talked about where he wanted to go
further once he'd finished his apprenticeship.
He was more competent and more professional than some
of the tradesmen I've employed in my business.
I had a system going that if they could beat me at
my rules and regulations, well I'd put on a carton of beer
for the boys.
So they were always trying to outsmart the boss.
And when Dale beat me one day, my nose got rubbed in
it for many months, and if he was alive today he'd
still be doing it.
When we found out that I was pregnant, I was already
three and a half months.
They were young parents, so they were a little bit
nervous about that, but they were way beyond their
years with their maturity.
He wanted to be that hands on dad and provider.
He cried when he first saw him.
He did everything that a dad should do,
changed nappies, fed him.
He also went through a bit of a change I think when he
had Cooper as well.
He was always the larrikin, but he really knuckled down
and got serious as soon as Cooper came into the world.
Cooper was his whole world.
From day one he was proud of Cooper.
I saw a young man grow up very quickly overnight.
He went from a boy to a man.
It was on the Tuesday night he said to me
'What would you do if I asked you to marry me tomorrow?
Because tomorrow is the last three even dates for a
long time,' and it was the 12th of the 12th of the 12th.
I got a phone call from Dale's boss saying that
Dale had been electrocuted and could I get out to
Bentley Park College as quick as possible.
It took me a while to get there, because in the
morning traffic going out.
When I got there the media and everybody was at the school.
There was ambulances, there was fire brigade.
And on the way in, one of Dale's work colleagues
was standing there and he had his head hung.
He just didn't look at me. And I knew it was bad.
And Dale was laying on the floor of the room covered
up with a sheet, and they took the sheet off so that
I could sit there and talk to him and give him a
cuddle and give him a kiss.
I remember coming into the room after being told that
Dale had had an incident.
I saw the shock horror on three or four of the school
faces that were there.
The paramedics were there.
And the image I go to bed with every night is the
paramedics working on him.
I worked at the school, and I knew that Wayne and
Dale and his other workers were there that day.
I tried to go into the room where the emergency
services were working on Dale.
I was begging just to go in and hold his hand.
I just wanted to hold his hand.
And it wasn't until I walked in the office where
Dan was that I looked and I thought this can't be good.
Because I thought to myself he's going to say two names
probably, Melissa or Dale.
And then everywhere outside when we were walking,
everything was just dark, and the world was grey.
I received the phone call in the morning from Debbie
to go over there.
Just like my whole body shut off.
I thought something was up.
And then as I've got out of the car,
Dan told me what had happened.
Yeah. I walked in the door, and as soon as I seen everyone
I just said 'What's happened to Dale? Where's Dale?'
And I pretty much collapsed as they told me what happened.
I was just broken and I just cried.
I've never ever been so hurt and just destroyed.
It's not really a phone call you ever want to get.
You don't know what to say.
I don't even - it's kind of like what do you mean he's gone?
The first thing I thought when I heard he had died,
I was like I just hope that it was quick and he wasn't
laying there thinking about Cooper without him.
On that day they arrived at the school, and they
were supposed to start on a different building,
not that building.
He was working in the ceiling just running cable
for a CCTV I think, because the school had been
getting broken into.
So he wasn't even doing any electrical work.
I think Dale leant against the air-conditioner unit to
move his sol board just a bit further, and when he
put his hand down on the beam and his back,
he got electrocuted through his back.
Electrical injuries, and particularly industrial
electrical injuries, are very common.
Whether you live or die can't be summed up in one
particular little rule or otherwise.
It depends on the degree of exposure, the amount of
current that passes through the body, where it passes.
Let's say someone contacts electric current through
their two hands.
The current will pass up one arm, through the chest
and to the other side, broadly speaking.
The danger there is that it passes very close to the heart,
and it can induce heart rhythms which stops
its ability to pump blood regularly to the remainder
of the body.
The best way to reduce the risk of electrical
incidents in roof spaces is to turn the power off at
the switchboard, and make sure no one turns it back on again.
However it's important to remember that by turning
off the power at the switchboard, you may not
turn off all the sources of power in the roof space.
For instance, solar cables and mains cables will
remain live even when you have turned off the power at
the switchboard, and these risks will need to be controlled.
The Electrical Safety Office also strongly
recommended safety switches be fitted on all circuits
of domestic, commercial and industrial premises.
Sadly there have been too many electrocutions and
serious electrical incidents due to contact
with live parts in roof spaces.
Some of the most common causes appear to be pierced
cables making metal parts such as roof battens live,
cables damaged by vermin, unterminated cables,
or faulty equipment.
These hazards are difficult to see.
Roof spaces can be dark and difficult to navigate.
You just don't know what dangers are lurking,
so the simple and most effective way to keep workers
safer up there is to switch off the power.
You know, sometimes when you lose someone people
think you might not want to talk about it,
so they don't bring him up.
But we'd rather talk about him so he's not just a memory,
he's still alive every day.
It wasn't what you think life is going to be.
It just rips your heart clean out.
You just - it changes you.
You're just not the same person anymore that you
used to be.
And now we've got a little boy growing up without his father.
When Dale died, the police took all Dale's clothing.
They took everything that Dale had on him that day.
And it wasn't until a fair while after that I was able
to get some of Dale's possessions back,
and Dale's phone was one of them.
And on that night before Dale died, he took a little
video of Cooper.
I love you.
It's the most precious thing, and it's the only
thing that I've got Dale's voice on, and I've listened
to it a million times.
When I think about Cooper, I think a lot about Dale,
because Cooper's about that age now when I taught Dale.
Like father like son.
Cooper was a mirror image of Dale when he was growing up.
As he's getting older now, we can - - -
He is asking questions.
He's asking a lot of questions and telling about
his dad's mates and all the things that he used to do.
You just have to look at Cooper and I see just
different parts of him is Dale.
And it's nice. He's still around.
We try and keep Dale's memory alive in many ways.
One of the things that we do every year is there's
a Skills 360 awards night, and one of the awards
that's given out is the Dale Kennedy Award.
It goes to an apprentice who shows mateship,
works well in a team, aware of safety, like how to keep
themselves and others safe at work, a hard worker.
Pretty much what Dale was.
My husband organised with his car club to do a big cruise.
There were thousands and thousands of people,
and we raised a lot of money, over $20,000 for Cooper.
On the first anniversary of Dale's death, we planted
a tree in his memory outside the building he was
electrocuted in.
Every year on his anniversary we can go to
and lay flowers or just feel like we're sort of
with him for a moment.
Any worker entering any ceiling space to perform work
should turn off the power.
Definitely having such a loving family and
supportive family like my mum and dad.
Debbie and Danny and Melissa, knowing them before Dale passed and
then seeing what it did to them, it took a big toll
emotionally and physically on them both, and it's only
recently we've sort of seen that they've started to
live again.
I love you.