‘I NEARLY DIED’
The Perkins family has been rocked with health scares, with Hank telling WHO he’s had a number of dangerous experiences at work.
“I have had quite a few professions,” he says. “First off, I was working as a jackaroo on a cattle station. I had to finish up there because I had a few near-death experiences.”
The young larrikin got a thrill out of his scares and doesn’t regret them. “If I see a minimal chance of me being in a place where I need to be at high speeds, I’m going to take that chance.”
However, as a result he did admit he “got flown in the Royal Flying Doctors twice”.
“I’ve come unstuck twice … Mustering, I was racing around on a motorbike and a horse. I had pretty bad crashes,” he confesses.
“I got flown by the Royal Flying Doctors and my brain function didn’t come back for at least a day or two” after one incident, he adds.
It was Hank’s father Terry who told him he might need to pull the plug on the intensity of his jobs. ”After the second crash, Dad said to me, ‘Look, Hank, you can keep doing this but you might end up dying because of the risks you take, or you could start earning some good money.’ So he suggested mining and at that stage there was a lot of work in the mines.”
Hank went on to be a mining rigger, however he said his mum’s stroke triggered a need to head back home and spend time with his loved ones. “After she had her stroke, I went back to work and I told the supervisor on the first day back that I was going to quit,” he says.
“After that I had no real idea what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to live with Lily and be close to mum after the stroke. So I progressed into real estate through Lily’s granddad because he’s a real-estate agent.”
While his office job is a little less extreme, Hank has taken up race-car driving so he can still experience a few thrills. “I decided to go all-in on racing. It is dangerous.”
“My uncle was in V8 supercars, Larry Perkins. He owned the Perkins racing car team and dad used to race as well. He won the Australia Formula 4 championship and got a Penfold’s sponsorship to race in Europe, which was Formula 3, so he knows these cars through and through.”