Woman of eight lives — an action hero at 85
Janette Falconer survived a fiery plane crash in the Sahara, detonated a bomb at school, and was held hostage in Iran. At 85, she’s not planning on slowing down, writes
Janette Falconer has looked death in the eye seven times. Each time death has looked away. Two weeks shy of 85 and she isn’t like most women in their 80s — her life sounds more like a Hollywood blockbuster.
The action-packed trailer would include her detonating a bomb at high school, sitting inside a burning plane as it crashed in the Sahara Desert, and being held by armed police in Iran.
There would also be romance and plenty of heart-wrenching moments, including the deaths of some of the hundreds of children with cancer that she has cared for during the past 40 years.
To Falconer, it was just life while visiting 85 countries. But whenever she starts talking to people they are fascinated about her adventures around the globe.
“Weird things sort of happen when you are travelling,” she tells the Herald on Sunday. “All sorts of incredible things have happened to me.
“I think I’m really lucky that I have survived so many different experiences that could have killed me. I’m just lucky I haven’t gone grey.”
Falconer grew up in England during the war. She was an adventurous child with a mischievous brother who taught her how to make bombs — one of which she detonated under a classroom where teachers were having lunch when she was 15. Shaken staff fled the room and Falconer’s school days ended.
“I’m not a sadist, I didn’t want to kill anyone, but it did make a fantastic noise,”
The bomb is one of Falconer’s few regrets, but expulsion meant travelling instead of medical school.
In her early 20s Falconer had her first brush with death during a flight from Paris to Casablanca.
“All was well, until when approaching Africa, the air hostess announced ‘fasten your safety belts, we are making an emergency landing. We have an engine on fire’.
“I was 21 and thought nothing could happen to me. I wasn’t terribly worried, I thought it was quite interesting.”
The next thing she remembers is waking up wrapped in a blanket next to the fuselage of the plane in the Sahara Desert.
After being discharged from hospital she sailed to South Africa where she found herself in hospital again. It would be just one of many times during her travels — but this was by far one of the most serious.
She was ice skating with a friend when they hit a bump in the ice.
“I landed on my head, moving at a very high speed and I honestly can still remember the massive scrunch of my head making contact with those jagged pieces of ice.”
She spent the next five months undergoing treatment.
“I went to theatre three times — once to get a couple of holes drilled in my skull.
“Another time I came out with an enormous amount of needles and tubes protruding from my neck.”
Her parents were sent a telegram saying she wasn’t going to survive. Again, she defied the odds.
Falconer’s life took a different turn in the 1950s when she received a phone call from the relative of a man called Ian, whom she had met when she first arrived in South Africa. His wife had left him, and his young boys — who remembered Falconer from when they stayed in the same hotel — were calling for her to come and look after them. So, she quit her job and took care of the boys.
She also ended up marrying their father and they went on to have a son called Nicholas, who she accidentally left at the beach one day after a family outing soon after he was born. It’s a story he never lets her forget.
In 1960, following a terrifying massacre during which she saw police cut the heads off several men, the family moved to New Zealand where daughter Karina and son Gregan were born.
Life was never dull for the family of seven — their Mairangi Bay home burnt down after the busy mum left a preserving pan on the stove one day.
Nicholas remembers a happy childhood, although times were often tight. He said his thrifty mother, experienced in wartime rationing from her childhood, would always find a way through.
By the early 1970s the couple had saved enough to take two of the children to England to visit relatives.
Falconer left early but was back in hospital when the aeroplane had barely hit the runway. She collapsed at Heathrow Airport after having a reaction to eye make-up remover.
“That was essentially the end of my sight for a week. Swollen, weeping, the pain was excruciating.”
When the boys returned home she travelled some more visiting Denmark, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines where she had more moments only a scriptwriter could imagine.
One involved her ending up in a room with a stranger after part of ceiling came down in her room and she was left sodden as water poured in through a chandelier.
A staff member put Falconer, dressed only in a wet nightie, in another room — but it was already occupied.
“From the bed came the sound of heavy snoring and in the moonlight I spied my newly acquired bedfellow — a gentleman of unknown origins.
“I couldn’t stand in the darkness for another four hours so I carefully eased myself into the spare side of the bed, with half of me hanging over the side to keep as far away as possible.”
In the morning she left her companion, who had slept through everything, a note saying “Thanks for a nice night”.
Eventually it came time to return to New Zealand — but on a flight “a guy went berserk with a knife and was trying kill passengers. We were all instructed to get on the floor and cover heads till he was overpowered and removed from the plane.”
Falconer’s life “changed forever” when she was 37 and her husband died suddenly. She worked three jobs and up to 16 hours a day to make sure their five children didn’t suffer.
By the late 1970s she started working on a ward at Auckland Hospital where there were children with cancer.
“I didn’t know it at the time but a vitally important chapter of my life was just beginning”.
Some of the children had few visitors or their families had little support, so she started visiting them after hours.
The first child she became attached to was a little boy called Ofa. She spent up to six hours a day on weekends reading to him and playing board games like Snakes and Ladders.
Seven weeks later he died with Falconer and his mother at his side.
“This was a foreign world to me and I found it incredibly hard to cope with. This sweet child that I had walked around carrying almost constantly for weeks was dead.
“Despite it being extremely hard to deal with I knew that I was in the place I was meant to be.” Ofa was one of hundreds of children she spent time with during the next 40 years.
Many of their pictures now hang on her fridge. Some of their parents still call and visit.
A year after she started working at the hospital she met Gerhard — a
I’m really lucky that I have survived so many different experiences that could have killed me. I’m just lucky I haven’t gone grey.
man who she would spend 33 years with before he died of cancer.
Over the years they had countless children stay with them, two on a semi-permanent basis.
In the 1980s there were many KoruCare funded trips to Disneyland, some of which involved famous actors and pop stars who had agreed to meet with the sick children.
Back here there were fundraising drives alongside people like Sir John Kirwan and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. She was involved in Camp Quality for nearly 20 years.
In 2016 her work with children saw her awarded a Queens Service Medal.
Falconer’s work with sick children didn’t slow down her travel. One of her trips with Gerhard took them to Iran and a mistimed arrival at the border with Pakistan — the day after the British had withdrawn from Iran and just days after an American chopper was shot down.
The couple were taken into custody.
“We knew our lives could be on the line but we could do nothing about it. We were locked in a small cell. (It was) a very scary time as we waiting until the Iranian authorities decided whether to shoot us all or let us travel through Iran.”
They were instead escorted through the country.
At one stage a guard held a cocked rifle held under her chin while stroking her arm and they saw the bodies of the pilots who had been shot down on display at one town they were driven through.
The bus they were being transported in with four armed guards was also involved in an accident that tore the back right off the bus.
It was a huge relief when they made it to Turkey.
“We were later told by authorities that we were only allowed through because all the American helicopters had been shot down and all pilots killed.
“If the Americans had been successful in their attempt then we would all have been shot.”
During the mid-1980s, while exploring Asia again, Falconer had another two narrow escapes from death.
The first was in the Himalayas when a storm rolled in and she was sheltering near a haystack which was picked up by the wind and thrown on top of her.
“I was smothered and it was not possible to breathe because of the dry hay going down my throat. I was struggling, panicking, but within minutes my fellow trekkers had ripped their way through the haystack and go me out.”
Days later she was caught in a whirlpool after being thrown into white water while rafting the Trisuli River.
“One moment I could hear the roaring of white water in my ears, the next moment all was cool, green, quiet and my body was spinning, spinning, spinning.
“I fought and thrashed around trying to get to the air, but of course I was also swallowing water.
“I remember thinking ‘I can’t fight anymore’.
“I was saying ‘please god, please god, I don’t want to die in Nepal’.”
Her fellow rafters pulled her limp body out of the water and managed to get her breathing again after pumping water from her chest.
“Thirty six years later I am still numb with fear of the smallest of waves at the beach and cannot put my head under water.”
The early 2000s saw several trips to Australia.
One on occasion the Subaru Gerhard was driving was clipped by the bull bars of a road train — a long truck and trailer unit used to transport freight.
“We were carried in the air, then flung out of the side and went spinning, spinning, spinning into the scrub on the side of the road.”
She ended up in a small hospital, again.
“Just another close-up of the Pearly Gates for me,” she recalls.
Later that decade Falconer ended up with pneumonia during a visit to Antarctica and in plaster after breaking her leg in Samoa.
In January 2010 Gerhard was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died in June 2011. “It’s hard for me to remember a day when Gerhard didn’t make me laugh — he was a clever, intelligent man who would agree to some pretty crazy plans I put before him.
“I miss him still, but now it is tempered with the thoughts that I was so blessed to have him in my life for so long.”
She sold their home and moved to O¯ rewa where she remains today.
There were more trips, including one in 2018 to Malaysia where her son was getting married. Her last was in 2019 where she met up with her sister again and explored Portugal and Rome.
Then, 2020 arrived with a global pandemic that halted all travel.
So, Falconer did the next best thing. She sat down and wrote about all of her adventures.
In the absence of travel Falconer is doing everything she can to remain active these days.
She gets up six days a week and does 10km on her exercycle — the seventh day of the week she helps run Mainly Music for toddlers.
Falconer hopes she will live long enough to visit Bhutan and Uzbekistan but, despite the colour of her hair, she is aware of her age.
“I have absolutely no fear whatsoever over what is ahead of me. I know exactly where I am going — the biggest journey of my life and it’s not costing a cent in cash.”
Her only question now is how many of the beloved children she has lost will be waiting there for her desperate to catch up on all of her journeys.
(It was) a very scary time as we waiting until the Iranian authorities decided whether to shoot us all or let us travel through Iran.