Karl George Burgess A Modest Hero

Karl George Burgess is the Operations Manager and Founder of BD14 LTD, a Manawatu based professional solutions company which was established in early 2014. BD14 has been developed to supply transport companies with high standard professional drivers. Karl believes passionately in delivering excellence to his clients and because of his supreme service and hardworking ethics he has seen BD14 grow and develop rapidly over its first 6 months. He has engaged with many local transport companies and is proud to now be the sole provider for two of the largest companies within New Zealand. Karl never asks or expects his drivers to do anything he hasn’t already done. However he does expect his drivers to go that extra mile and deliver excellence to the customer.

What most people don’t know about Karl is that he was instrumental in saving a mate’s life in 2006. Karl and his mate, Bryan Matenga, had set off on a tahr-hunting expedition in the Southern Alps with the legendary Manawatu rugby rep, Phonse Carroll. They were helicoptered into the Fox Glacier area in the Landsborough, huge country that Matenga said makes the Ruahine Ranges “look like bowling greens”.
As the boys tell it, ‘Fonze’ set off up another ridge while Matenga and Burgess tackled a massive hill. They were on all fours most of the way to the top where there had been an overnight dump of snow. The further they went the more they were becoming ‘bluffed out’ and about 20 metres from the top they ran out of room, and were kicking their feet into the snow to get a foothold. As they could no longer go down, they just had to continue going up. They were both trying to keep calm but as Matenga said, “It was pretty scary stuff”, and six metres from the top he grabbed at a rock to pull himself up and, unfortunately, it gave way, sending him tumbling over an 80 metre bluff, bouncing off rocks, snow and ice all the way down.

By all accounts he shouldn’t have survived such a fall, and all that he and the doctors can surmise is that he was knocked out cold during his fall which relaxed him and prevented serious injury or death. When he came to he figured that as he wasn’t dead, he must be paralysed but he managed to stagger to his feet, and Burgess, still at the top of the cliff couldn’t believe his eyes. It took him 40 painstaking minutes to get down the cliff, using his rifle to make footholds in the snow. They then had another 3km to get back to their tents and Matenga swears he couldn’t have made it without his mate, “He saved my life.”