My name is Stuart, and if there’s one thing that’s woven through my life more than any other, it’s travel.
For more than forty years, I travelled the world, from working as a Top Deck courier in Europe in the 1980s, six months driving all over Europe, to wandering across continents mainly as a solo traveller. In 2018, I set out on what I hoped would be a three-year trip through Indonesia, the Philippines, Borneo, Taipei, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Laos, Vietnam and beyond. The plan was simple: explore as much of Asia as I could, meet up with my brother, who was trekking to Everest Base Camp, then catch the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow, a city I’d first visited back in 1986.
On February 11, 2018, I started a three-year trip to backpack around the world. I was volunteering at a school in Nepal as a builder come handyman, when, on May 20, 2018, it all ended abruptly, life had a different route planned.
Seemingly, on May 19, 2018, I had just purchased a motorcycle to travel around Asia. Then. I was returning to school when I had a major life-changing accident. I do not know what happened. In the accident, I broke many bones, including my vertebrae, which also tore my Spinal Cord. It left me a Paraplegic and in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Also, I received a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) because of the accident, which damaged my kidneys and lungs, and broke my skull and many other bones.
I was taken to Pokhara Hospital by ambulance and then airlifted to Kathmandu Hospital a few days later. A week later, I was airlifted to Bangkok Hospital. My three children, Alexandra, Jack and Bella, were flown to Bangkok to see me. My injuries were life-threatening, and everybody concerned expected me to die.
About a month later, when I was stabilised, having had several operations, I was then flown to Sydney. My next memory was waking up in Ward 7E at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. I remained in the ICU and then the Paraplegic wards for nine months. My family and friends, both Australian and Kiwis, visited me often. When I started to remember again, I was transferred to Royal Rehab Hospital, Ryde, where I stayed for 14 months learning how to live life again. after a traumatic brain injury and a T10 complete spinal cord injury.
When I was finally deemed “well enough”, I was moved into a group home with four other residents with significant cognitive impairments. After being repeatedly attacked by one of the residents, I spent most of my days locked in my room for safety.
Then one afternoon, watching a livestream of the New Zealand Prime Minister announcing the first Covid travel bubble, something inside me clicked. Travel had always been my freedom, my identity, my reset button. Within minutes, I booked a flight back to Auckland to see my three kids and two grandsons, the people who have always grounded me. Two weeks later, I was on a plane. For the first time since the accident, I felt human again.
That trip changed everything.
I am now living in an apartment by myself in Rockdale, Sydney, with support people very nearby, as an unemployed Paraplegic. My brain is healing and is now about 98% of what it used to be.
I am currently a NDIS participant living in Sydney, Australia.
It reminded me that even after paralysis, brain injury, and more hospital beds than I can count, travel was still possible. Harder? Yes. Slower? Sometimes. But absolutely, undeniably possible. And that’s when The Travelling Para was born.
I created this site to show others, especially those newly injured, that life doesn’t stop after a spinal or brain injury. The world is still out there. Adventure is still out there. Confidence is still out there. But my journey didn’t stop at travel.
After my wheelchair was damaged three times and once left behind in New Zealand, I knew something had to change. Every wheelchair user knows the fear of handing over their chair at the aircraft door. It’s not luggage, it’s our mobility. It’s our independence. It’s our legs.
So, I started We Deserve Better, a campaign to get the airlines and their outsourced companies to treat wheelchairs and other mobility equipment with the respect they deserve.
As a former aircraft engineer for both Qantas and Air New Zealand, I understood the industry from the inside. That experience opened doors – and I’m now working directly with airlines, ground handlers and design teams to improve how wheelchairs are handled. It’s slow, but progress is happening.
Today, I continue to travel, write, speak, advocate and connect with others who are rebuilding life after injury.