Farm hand’s first plane ride after run-in with a roo

Stephanie Gardiner | July 26, 2026

As Patrick Blomfield rode home after a long day mustering goats in the outback, a big kangaroo suddenly leapt into the side of his motorbike.

Stunned, the young farm hand called to his workmate for help.

“I slowed down, pulled up and said, ‘Oh mate, I think I’ve snapped my leg here’,” Mr Blomfield told AAP.

The freak accident and the ringer’s laconic reaction could only happen in rural Australia.

The collision occurred as Mr Blomfield returned to a farmhouse after working on the remote property near Ivanhoe, in far western NSW, in May.

The 23-year-old was riding about 60km/h, when the eastern grey came out of nowhere, he said.

After alerting his mate, he laid down in the paddock and his bosses called emergency services.

The kangaroo was, sadly, “cactus”, he said.

“He came off worse than me.”

It was 90 minutes before paramedics could get to him, so Mr Blomfield used a pain-relieving green whistle from a Royal Flying Doctor Service medical chest kept on the property.

He also tried not to look at his shattered leg.

“You just sorta grin and bear it,” he said.

Paramedics took him to the small Ivanhoe hospital, before the aeromedical service flew him to an Adelaide hospital.

“It was my first time being in a plane,” Mr Blomfield said.

“It’s not the way I planned it … (like) going to the Bahamas or something.”

Retrieval registrar Ross Gillespie, who works for the service’s south eastern section out of Broken Hill and Dubbo, said it was one of the more memorable call-outs.

“As an Englishman, it was somewhat comical that he’s gotten in an altercation with a kangaroo,” Dr Gillespie told AAP, saying Mr Blomfield was also in good spirits.

“It’s something I haven’t come across in my life. 

The farmhand broke both his tibia and fibula, which showed the enormous force of the impact, Dr Gillespie said.

The job was also unusual because the retrieval team treated Mr Blomfield on the Ivanhoe air strip late at night.

“It was pitch black,” Dr Gillespie said.

“The darkness also added a bit of novelty and some extra challenge.”

Dr Gillespie, an anaesthetist, will soon return to the UK.

“Obviously there’s not going to be any kangaroo-related incidents back home.”

In 2023-24, the RFDS transported nearly 33,000 remote patients.

The service also maintains and supervises more than 2000 sophisticated medical kits on remote properties.

Most rural Australians have some connection to the flying doctor service, which also runs clinics and a telehealth service.

“It’s quite a special relationship between the communities that we serve and the organisation,” Dr Gillespie said.

“These really small towns are quite dependent on RFDS but it’s a two-way relationship because we rely on on their continued support.

“They maintain the airstrips that we land on and it might only be once a year that we use them but that could be enough to save a life.”

Mr Blomfield had a metal rod inserted into his leg and is recovering at home in Caroona, in the NSW Liverpool Plains.

He has plans to get back to work as a travelling farm contractor, a job that’s also taken him to Far North Queensland.

“You meet a lot of characters and genuine bush people who care,” he said.

“There’s no shit, they’re just good, genuine people.”