Avocado contractor Troy Hill and his family. Photo / Supplied
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Calling Troy Hall “lucky” is a bit of an understatement.
Hall was on a ladder working in an avocado orchard in 2011 when he was electrocuted – twice.
“The first one killed me and went directly through my head and the second one went through my chest and brought me back to life about 30 seconds later,” he told The Country’s Jamie Mackay.
If that wasn’t traumatic enough, the second jolt left Hall engulfed in flames.
He wasn’t expected to live, let alone walk again, but he defied the odds and now runs a successful avocado contracting business.
Hall’s story is even more inspiring, considering his difficult upbringing.
As a teenager, he got involved with the wrong crowd and spent ten years of his life in an underground world of drugs and alcohol.
Now Hall uses his experiences to help others, talking to horticulture workers as a motivational speaker.
There were two important themes he shared from his experience at these talks – self-care and self-respect.
“That’s definitely a key message for me these days because it’s something that I lacked for pretty much most of my life, to be honest…
“Since I’ve been working on myself and doing a lot of soul searching, I realised that that is a really big part of it for me, looking back.”
Now Hall employs a “healthy mind, healthy body” approach, making sure he sleeps and eats well and works out regularly at the gym.
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He said these weren’t “top of the list,” during his teenage years.
“I thought I had self-care, I thought I had self-respect, but I had the complete opposite… I was in a lot of denial at the time.”
Grateful that he was “still here today,” Hall hoped his story would help others.
“One of my main goals these days is to be able to... inspire others to reflect on their own lives [and] hopefully, it can give them some sort of push to better themselves as well and take care of themselves.”
Hall is also helping to promote the rural wellbeing programme Farmstrong, including supporting farmers affected by Cyclone Gabrielle.
He encouraged those farmers to lean on the people around them to get through hard times.
“The stronger the community is, and the people that get together and try and help each other out ... it makes things a little easier for you.”
He had a message for those doing it tough.
“Just take care of yourself, because once you take care of yourself, you can take care of others.”
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