A grieving father says he may never return to his farm workshop after the tragic death of his two-year-old son.
Travis Membrey recounted the fateful moments his son Darcy was crushed by a fertiliser bin weighing about two tonnes at a Naringal farm on Wednesday.
All he had to do was give us a smile and your heart would melt.
- Travis Membrey
He told 3AW Radio that Darcy was in the shed with him as he was getting ready to prepare hay.
“We had the rake hooked on and greased it, and he was just walking around with his hammer tapping things, making sure everything was right,” Mr Membrey said.
“I went to unhook the fertiliser spreader off the back of the tractor, like I've done hundreds of times before, and he was standing right next to me.
“But in a split second, the spreader just toppled off the stand and he wasn't next to me. I was running around trying to find him and then I could see him trapped underneath.
“It was full of fertiliser, which would have been two tonnes and I was just yelling out because (my) father Bruce and another friend were working in the shed nearby and I was just screaming.
“I jumped on the forklift and was trying to lift it up and we were digging through trying to find him, but just couldn't get to him.
“We cut the lid off the fertiliser spreader and lifted it up with the forklift. I dragged him out and just ran because my parent's house is right there, so I ran there and they were already talking to the ambulance, who were on the way.”
Mr Membrey said while he had done CPR courses, moments after the accident he “just had no idea”. He said emergency services, heading back to Warrnambool from Timboon, were on the scene within 15 minutes.
Mr Membrey recalled fondly that Darcy was a “rascal” who knew he could “get away with anything”.
“All he had to do was give us a smile and your heart would melt and you'd think, 'OK, you couldn't do anything wrong’,” Mr Membrey said.
“Everything to him was just easy-going.
“He wasn't any fuss, he would look after himself and just wanted to be with people.”
Mr Membrey said he was “heavily involved” with the Allansford community and local support had been “amazing”.
Pizzas were brought around on the night of the accident from the local pub, while others offered to help him out with calving on the dairy farm.
“You could say (we're coping) as well as can be, but we don't really know what that is at the moment,” he said.
“We've just got family and friends around at our house, along with cousins, so the girls are out playing, and we're just working out what's next.”
But Mr Membrey said some public reaction to the accident on social media hadn’t been so supportive.
“People are saying (on Facebook) kids shouldn't be on farms,” he said. “But if kids weren't on the farms, they don't get to see their parents.
“And that's the hardest thing – these kids were brought up on tractors, they knew exactly what was happening and they're little, but if they don't come with me to work, then they don't see me.
“You could say kids aren't meant to be on farms, but that's how they're brought up; that's how I was brought up; that's how 90 per cent of the kids on farms these days go.
“I know now that I’ll no longer be able to have my children at work, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back because it happened in my workshop where I’m always at.”
