It is every parent’s nightmare. One minute life is ‘cruising’ normally, and the next, your world is turned upside down when your young, helpless child becomes terribly ill and gets rushed to hospital in a critical condition.
And what do you do when that happens twice, to two of your children?
Well, once child number one has fully recovered, you set up a fundraising event to say ‘thank you’ to the people who saved his life. Then, you donate lifesaving equipment that will save other young lives.
That is precisely what Phil Kearns AM, former Wallaby captain and two-time World Cup winner, did. The Australian Rugby Hall-of-Famer established the annual fundraising event: the Balmoral Burn.
Phil can remember the first Burn as if it was yesterday – although he would rather forget how it came about over 20 years ago.
The Kearns family’s first emergency came when their son, Finn, was rushed to Royal North Shore Hospital with suspected meningococcal. That was the Balmoral Burn’s genesis. Now, two decades and thirty-plus million dollars later, the man who played rugby union for his country 67 times can look back on the Burn’s history with considerable satisfaction.
As Finn was recovering, Phil approached Paul Francis OAM, the man who established the Humpty Dumpty Foundation. He planned to raise ten thousand dollars in a one-off event: A 420 metre run up Sydney’s steepest street, Awaba Street, Balmoral, on the city’s Lower North Shore. Macquarie Bank came on board with a large donation, as well as sponsorship, and that first race attracted a handful of competitors.
Now, fast forward a few years:
Finn had fully recovered. And, as if one family emergency was not enough, emergency number two came along. In October 2005, Phil accidentally drove over his 19-month-old daughter, Andie, while coming into the steep driveway of his Mosman home. When ambulance and police arrived, they found Andie had sustained life-threatening injuries to her stomach and abdomen. She was rushed to Royal North Shore Hospital and then airlifted to the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, on the other side of Sydney Harbour.
During Andie’s treatment, Phil could see that the doctors at Royal North Shore were using equipment that had been donated as a result of the Balmoral Burn. Some of it got used to save his daughter’s life.
These days, the Balmoral Burn generates national media attention every year. What was to be a one-off event continues to attract many generous corporate sponsors and thousands of young and not-so-young, able and disabled competitors – all to make a significant impact on the lives of critically sick and injured children in around 500 hospitals and health centres across Australia.
Who would have thought that Phil’s way of saying ‘thank you’ all those years ago in 2001 would become an annual fundraising event?
By Steve Liebmann
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