How Australia Day changed my life
Paralympic gold medalist and proud Aussie Kurt Fearnley talks about what Australia Day means to him, his experience on the Kokoda Track and the importance of a fighting spirit.
I’m a proud country boy from Carcoar, New South Wales. When I was born I was missing half my spine and I wasn’t expected to live out the month. My family was encouraged to leave me behind at the hospital to facilities created to cater for people like me. Fortunately, my family only ever saw me growing up as their youngest boy and rather than leave me behind, they took me home and I took up my place as the shortest member of the Fearnley family.
When I think of my childhood and growing up in the bush, it feels like a story from the Fifties not the Eighties. I grew up with an abundance of love but money was pretty short. In a house the size of an inner-city apartment, my mum and dad raised their five children and cared for my granny. Thankfully the wood-fired oven kept the place warm in winter, but the outback toilet made a midnight trip to the dunny a terrifying experience.
My family never told me what I couldn’t do or what was off-limits. They just sat back and found out what was possible. Growing up with a disability doesn’t bring with it a sense of shame or self-doubt; it’s only when we learn to interpret the faces of the people around us, or when our environment offers no chance of interacting on an ordinary level, that we learn such things.
On the property I grew up on in Carcoar, concrete was a luxury that we didn’t have, so a wheelchair wasn’t much use. I didn’t see myself as a kid confined to a wheelchair; for a while I didn’t even know what a wheelchair was. If I was going to keep up with the rest of the kids in my town, crawling was going to be the way of my world.
Every day was fishing, rabbiting, swimming and finding trees that I could climb – and more often than not – fall out of. I’d follow my brothers through any number of paddocks. At times they would carry me for kilometres on end but at no point were they going to do it all for me. I’d be told repeatedly that I could do anything and they continually helped me build the confidence to give it a go. Before I was five I learnt how to keep up on the ground by climbing my way through and over barbed wire and electric fences; cross streams that from one foot high looked like raging rivers; or the worst, put my head down and belt through blackberry bushes.
Every afternoon when I eventually made it home, my knees were usually pretty badly beaten up. The scratches would be fairly deep and the bruises would last for a while and I knew that at the end of every day, Mum would have a few words for me. If you thought walking children go through the knees in their pants, I was a knee destroyer!
Every metre I dragged myself was another moment of empowerment.
On top of the usual activities that kids get up to in the bush, sport played a huge part in my childhood. Rugby league and cricket were the favourites. If I wasn’t falling out of a tree or pulling blackberry thorns out of my hair, I probably had a bat or ball in my hand. I had the same dreams as every other child of playing for Australia in the front row, swimming against Kieran Perkins or wicket keeping to the marvelous Merv Hughes. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t so I just kept on thinking that I would.
A turning point in my sporting aspirations came one Australia Day in the early Nineties. The day was no different to any other: crawling and bounding around a field chasing my brothers and cousins in one of our impromptu games of rugby league that never seemed to end. We’d been out there a while and I was pretty proud of myself, as usual. Chest out, kneeling as high as I could, I was fullback that day and every other. I had made a few covering tackles around my brothers’ and cousins’ ankles to cut off certain tries and in my eyes, I was no doubt heading towards a man-of-the-match performance.
Out of nowhere my dad appeared. He picked me up, hoisted me on his shoulder without a word and hurried me inside to sit down in front of the television. I had no idea what was going on and wasn’t too happy about it; who knows how many tries were going to be scored in my absence. What I saw, however, was something else.
I sat and watched people in wheelchairs race around the city of Sydney.
On the property I grew up on, in Carcoar, regional New South Wales, concrete was a luxury that we didn’t have, so a wheelchair wasn’t much use. I’d seen a few wheelchairs in my numerous visits to the hospitals in Sydney, but in my eyes these represented something pretty different. These were big powerful men. I’d dreamt of playing for my country in footy, but these boys seemed to showcase something even better. To me, they were gladiators and I had a new dream: I wanted to be one.
The athletes I saw that day were racing the Oz Day 10km. A race where the streets of Sydney are closed to allow wheelchair racers to take the stage in one of the most picturesque venues in world sport and on our national day. I knew that I wanted to be on that start line. I had to be in that race.
With the help of my school teacher, Maureen Dickson from BIayney High, I was introduced to Paralympic sport and from the very first moment I sat in a sports chair I was captivated. I wanted to be a wheelchair athlete. The uneven playing field I had played on all my life would be a thing of the past, finally the playing field would be level. If I did well I might even win a few things!
Thanks to the support of my local community (who raised $10,000 to get me racing) I bought my first racing wheelchair and, in 1996, took up a position at the Oz Day 10km start-line for the first time. I don’t remember much about that first race but I knew that I had found my place in life. While a bit younger and chubbier than the rest of the racers, I had become an apprentice gladiator.
For the past 17 years, my Australia Day has been spent with my family and my peers, participating in the sport that I love, in the packed and passionate atmosphere of The Rocks and Circular Quay. We’ll be there again this Saturday and I reckon we’ll be there for another 17 years yet.
The Oz Day race provided the platform I needed: I met the best in the world, I raced the best in the world and the experience on the streets of Sydney provided the springboard for my racing career. I’ve been traveling the world racing the best ever since.
I’m grateful to have recently returned home from my fourth Paralympic Games. London was the best Paralympics I’ve participated in and by the accounts of those who have been around longer than me, the best ever.
But after a dozen years of burying myself day in and day out with my wheelchair racing, all would be out shone by the eleven days I spent crawling across the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. To date, my Kokoda experience was the longest, most grueling family vacation that I have ever had. I don’t have kids yet and it may get outdone by a simple road trip to Carcoar one day, but for now, its number one. I was surrounded by my brothers, cousins and close friends on a journey of a lifetime.
Crawling Kokoda ripped my body to pieces but I am grateful for every moment that I was able to spend with my family who travelled with me on the Track. The love and support that I received from these people was only equaled by their confusion at why a person would want to crawl the Track in the first place.
I had my reasons. To keep it nice and simple I believed that I was strong enough to, I wanted to, and the ‘why nots’ just didn’t add up.
One of the lasting memories of the trip is the lengths that the local porters would go to to be sure that I could function at the end of every day. A PNG man named Mac who had no shoes, who had my 25kg backpack on his back, and who on occasion balanced my wheelchair on his head and shoulders, would continually try and convince me to let him carry me too. When I’d buried every part of my strength into the day, he was always there. I have received continual support in my life, but I’ve never needed it more than along that track.
When asked what the hardest part of that track was, I cannot go past every single evening. The crawling had stopped, the pain had kicked in and the realisation that I had another day of pain waiting for me in the morning. But each night I’d remind myself of what I was doing, of who I am, and of what our Aussies had done there in the past.
The choices that were made by our soldiers during the Kokoda campaign taught me more about who we are as Australians then a dozen years of racing for my country. These men fought for Australia, they fought for their mates, they fought for our future, and in some instances made the decision to sacrifice their life for a man they’d only just met. They looked after those who were worse off than themselves. One incredible man, Corporal John Metson, chose to crawl for two weeks through the jungle rather than taking the time and energy of the people who could offer support to others that he thought had it worse than him.
In my moments of managing the pain of my chosen career as a marathoner when I question ‘will I or wont I’, ‘can I or can’t I’, I remind myself of the choices made on the Track. I remind myself that whatever choice I make – I want those people at that time – I want them to be proud of whatever decision I make. I want their support.
My wheelchair is my life, it is my independence, I don’t like to see it leave my sight. While I spent large parts of my childhood out of a chair, and was crazy enough to crawl the Kokoda Track, I can’t imagine life without my chair. It is part of who I am, my legs, my life. I’ve seen first-hand through my travels through countries less fortunate than ours what life is like for people who don’t have access to a wheelchair. Every day is a struggle and pure sustained existence is astonishing. And so I am grateful for the potential funding of wheelchairs to people with disabilities across our nation. But on many occasions the wheelchairs are inadequate to live a healthy, independent, and abled life.
Should we as Australians be grateful to be able to exist? Or should we ask to be given the chance to contribute and prosper?
I believe the later.
Kurt Fearnley was born with lumbar sacral agenesis, missing the lower portion of his spine, but has defied adversity to become one of Australia’s greatest athletes. As a qualified Physical Education teacher, he travels throughout NSW teaching high-school children in small and large communities. Kurt was recognised as the 2009 New South Wales Young Australian of the Year and is also an Australia Day Ambassador. This blog includes extracts from Kurt’s 2013 Australia Day address.
Sue Ellson
January 29, 2013 at 12:42 am
How should Australians live?
My mother contracted polio when she was nine, so she has always walked with a limp. As the eldest of four children, I used to get angry with people who would stare at my mother walking. I now realise that they were attracted to seeing something different.
I am thankful every day for my ability to walk. To be able to go up and down stairs, over obstacles and onto public transport. I never complain if I am tired walking or if my shoes hurt, I can walk.
All Australians, born here, citizens and residents are very fortunate to be here, a very civilised part of the world – where we find many accessible footpaths, transport and sporting opportunities for all abilities.
However, as you suggest Kurt, it is only when we can contribute our unique skills, abilities and talents for the greater good that we can tangibly share the fortune that we have.
There is always more to be done – and when people like you, with your courage, enthusiasm and joie de vivre can set an example, we can all be inspired to take our own steps – whatever step that is – physical, intellectual or what we need the courage to do.
Sue Ellson