Blackburn intersection traffic light changes too little, too late for widow of hit Catharina Shacklock, Terry

Improvements to a notorious intersection in Melbourne’s east are cold comfort for a pensioner whose wife became a road fatality before safety measures were put in place.

Avid walker Catharina Shacklock signed up for Lifeline and walked 10,000 steps a day to raise money for the charity months before her death at troubled intersection.

Forced to take a detour on his drive home one day in August 2022, Terry Shacklock had no idea the reason he’d been diverted from usual route was because his beloved wife of 54 had just been hit by a truck and was now fighting for her life.

But then came a knock at the door with sombre police bearing the tragic news that would up-end his life and devastate a community.

Former police officer-turned-truckie Garry Barker had hit retired nurse Catharina, known as Ineke, just 500m from her Blackburn home.

Six weeks later, Ineke died from her injuries.

Speaking to the Herald Sun almost three years on, Terry recalls driving up Williams Rd and being forced to turn left to follow a detour sign.

Catharina ‘Ineke’ Shacklock was returning home from her first outing after a 10-day Covid isolation when she was hit by a truck at a Blackburn North intersection. Picture: Supplied.

“I was mildly annoyed at having to do that but at the same time thinking that obviously something has happened on the intersection,” he says.

“I’d only been home for about half an hour when police turned up to advise me that my wife had been injured in an accident and taken to hospital, and that’s when I realised that was her lying on the road surrounded by emergency people.”

Born with Best Disease, Ineke was legally blind but her love for walking had her regularly roaming her neighbourhood.

In fact, it was walking that brought the couple together half a century earlier.

Terry Shacklock still feels his wife's presence in every corner of their Blackburn North home. Picture: Supplied.

Both members of the Catholic Walking Club of Victoria, Terry was “just struck” by the way Ineke looked while talking to others.

“I think I fell in love with her at that moment, and I didn’t even know her name,” he says.

They were married and the days turned into years which turned into decades.

“We both knew what the other one was thinking. We never had to tell each other that something needed to be done. I don’t think we ever had an argument,” Terry says.

In the months before she was hit, Ineke signed up for a Lifeline challenge to walk 10,000 steps a day and raise money for the mental health charity.

The walks had been put on hold in July after the 76-year-old tested positive for Covid, and on August 2, Ineke was excited to get out of a 10 day isolation and head to a meditation group that she encouraged hubby Terry to join.

He thought it was just a group of people sitting around and talking.

“After she died, I learnt about meditation and then I thought ‘Oh, if only I had realised that, I would have gone along and if I’d been with her at the meditation group, we’d have come home together’,” he says.

Ineke was popular — about 300 people attended her funeral — and three months later Terry got another knock on the door.

The young couple next door had only just heard and arrived with a large bouquet of flowers.

“They said she used to come and visit us and would bring us flowers, she would bring us food. That’s the sort of effect she’s had on people,” Terry says.

Retired police Senior Sergeant Garry Barker was given a community corrections order. Picture: Imran Ali

The driver responsible for her death, retired senior sergeant Garry Barker, received a community corrections order on a single charge of dangerous driving causing death.

In sentencing, Judge Michael O’Connell said there had been nine reported crashes and collisions at the intersection of Williams and Springfield roads in the 10 years between 2013 and 2023.

Two people had been killed, four had received serious injuries and all were caused by drivers turning right from Williams Rd into Springfield Rd who failed to give way to pedestrians.

“That is precisely the circumstances in this incident,” he said.

It wasn’t until after Ineke was hit that police suggested, and the local council implemented, a change that saw a red turning arrow show while the pedestrian crossing was green.

A further report from the Major Collision Investigation Unit to the Department of Transport and Planning in January 2023 also raised concerns about the safety of pedestrians at the intersection.

And changes to the intersection traffic lights required the consent of the department which, Terry says, regrettably came after his wife died.

It was too little, too late, he says.

“The intersection has always been known to have problems. Now that the changes are made, why doesn’t the same happen at every problem intersections? It’s only a technical issue.”

Despite her death, Terry says he still feels Ineke’s presence years after the crash.

“She’s with me every day, all day,” he says.

“The house that we created together, it’s basically her house.

“I wander around the house and I look at things and I go ‘Ineke did that, Ineke hung those pictures on the wall, Ineke put that pot plant there’. Everything has got her signature on it.”