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  • New Zealand Listener

    BOLTS FROM THE BLUE

    Mar 07, 2021 8 minutes
    by PAUL GORMAN

    Sparks zapped between his metal fillings and leapt from his horse’s shoes, confirming to James Falloon that he had narrowly escaped a lightning strike.

    Just 10 metres or so behind him, fellow Northland Hunt participant Roger McGill and his horse, Jaffa, lay dead

    Falloon, a former Canadian cowboy and now a semi-retired farmer in the Wairarapa, said thunder was rumbling to the north near Dargaville when the hunt began just before midday on April 15, 2008.

    “I’d trotted past him but none of us saw the flash or heard the boom. But it was like a force went through us. Blue sparks were coming o  the shoes of the horse. They were as big as your fingers. Sparks were going o  in my mouth.

    “My horse bolted and I turned around, and Roger was lying about five metres away from his horse. They were both dead.” McGill, who with his wife and two young sons lived on a Waitoki lifestyle block north of Auckland, was well known in theatre circles in the city and was a founding director of Theatre Corporate.

    Experts say that on average about one person dies each decade in New Zealand from being hit by lightning, about a quarter of those dying outright. Several farm animals are

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