In September of 2013, I had a traumatic quad bike accident, that left me with a brachical plexus injury to my right arm and a traumatic brain injury. I spent quite a bit of time at the Townsville hospital in recovery. I’m so grateful for the team there. I spent a fair bit of time in intensive care. Then a few months down in surgical, too. And then about 9 months in rehab. And I had to learn walk, talk and eat again.

And one day – I remember this story still to this day – mum was telling me that she came into rehab and just saw me running down the hall, and everyone just broke down. Because it was just ‘oh, you’re never going to be able to do that again’. It was great.

I believe that it (what I went through) made me come to the realisation that I’m ten foot tall, not bullet proof. And slow down and think about what you are doing, and everything will fall into place. I find I’ve adapted a really positive outlook on life. I’ve been reading lately, that a lot of trauma survivors, more than half the people that go through trauma, make the change to positive rather than negative. So I thought, why not. Being negative it will pretty much kill you.

Proving people wrong, I love that bit! At the moment, I am almost ready to launch my first book, it’s a story of my life pretty much. So ‘Strong’ will be released at the end of October, so I’m very excited for that. And I just started a branded merchandise line, it’s very exciting.

(My book talks about) pretty much how I rebuilt my life from being told you’ll never be a functioning of society again to turning around and ‘what’s this then?!’

I have always lived in regional Queensland. I’ve lived about three minutes south of the Ingham township my whole life. I moved to Townsville briefly when I was younger but other than that I have always been here. I love that you can live as ‘go, go, go’ as you want to, but when you want to tap out and live a bit quieter, you can. It’s great. I love Bronte beach, I love just going and sitting down there and not having to think about anything.