I will miss you John Jones!!!

Today I heard the sad news that it has been confirmed that the plane missing with mining executives has crashed and all on board are deceased. I want to say how sorry I am for all the families and friends that have been affected by this tragedy.

I want to share a personal story about one of these men, I worked with John Jones who at the time was with HWE Mining, I was asked to speak at their senior managers conference & then invited out for dinner afterwards.

HWE had arranged for a bus to transport all of the managers and their partners to the place we were having dinner, but the bus did not have wheelchair access so I arranged a taxi and was going to meet them at the venue. John decided that he did not want me travelling by myself so he put his wife on the bus and came in the taxi with me.

We had a great night and a lovely dinner followed by a night at the Myndall markets in Darwin, not to mention quite a few beers.

At the end of the night the managers and their partners climbed into the bus to go back to the hotel, I had a taxi voucher and said I would wait for a taxi. I told John to go on the bus with the rest of them. He said to me “Bullshit.... I’m not leaving you here by yourself!”

He sent the bus on its way and as there was a shortage of taxi’s we decided to walk & roll to the Casino, which was about a kilometre away, and jump in a cab from there.

Now Darwin is not the most wheelchair friendly place & combine this with maybe one or three too many drinks and you can imagine it was a funny trip to the casino. I think I fell out of my wheelchair twice and both times it was because John fell over me or I fell over him! (I’m sure it had nothing to do with the potholes in the road!)

When we arrived at the casino the taxi rank was full, we waited in line & eventually a sedan pulled up & the driver got out and said he can’t take a wheelchair! We were tired by now and just wanted to get back to the hotel so argued the point with the driver. In the end John said to him if he refused to take us he would report him to the taxi directorate and have his license suspended!

The taxi driver changed his mind and took us back to the hotel!

I’m sure those of you who met John will all have your stories of him, but he could have got on the bus and left me to make my own way home & argue with the taxi driver. But I guess that is just the sort of bloke he was.

See you later JJ, you owe me a beer!

James Wood