When the Dust Settles

by Cook, R

  The first part of the Nuffield program would really test my stamina. Our itinerary included up to twenty flights in six weeks, many of which were international. It was packed with long hours and few opportunities to stay in one place for two nights in a row. If I was able to take my two carers as well as Sarah on the trip, I believed it could be done. While the scholarship bursary would cover some of my personal costs, we had to find more money for the support crew to go with me. On-going negotiations were being held with the insurance company involved with the helicopter crash about what financial support could be offered for me to undertake my Nuffield scholarship. It became a tedious task as my idea of support and the company’s idea of support differed dramatically. One option raised was for a third party to travel overseas instead of me and film the locations that the rest of the group went to. The proposal would mean I’d stay home and watch the videos on replay before writing my report. I’ve never been the kind of person to do something half-heartedly; that’s how I was raised. If I was to undergo the study like an able-bodied person, then I would travel like one too. Finally we reached an agreement to have two carers go with me, but another problem arose. Finding two carers who would work a seven-week stint without a break would not be easy. Again we had to turn to family, and fortunately Loretta and Jake put up their hands to help.

  Two weeks before we were due to leave for our first stopover in New Zealand, in March 2011, I had prepared myself to swallow my pride and take the trip in a manual, folding wheelchair. It meant I’d have to rely on someone to push me every step of the way. Ideally I wanted my four-wheel drive chair, particularly if we were visiting farms, but the sheer size and bulkiness of the chair made it impractical to take. All advice I received was to take a manual, ordinary chair. I had accepted the idea until I visited a specialist in Adelaide for a run-of-the-mill seating assessment. As I sat in the rehab centre with the occupational therapist, an elderly man wheeled in on a slim, compact motorised chair.

  ‘What’s that chair?’ I asked my OT.

  ‘Oh it’s a Glyde Series IIII,’ he replied. ‘They are great little chairs and they fold up.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ I exclaimed. ‘How heavy are they?’

  ‘Only about thirty kilograms,’ he told me. ‘And most of the weight is in the battery.’

  Through that chance encounter I discovered a suitable chair that I could take with me overseas. During the next two hours, an agent brought in a demo chair for me to try and we fitted a suitable back rest and hand control. This amazing slimline model would allow me so much more independence when travelling. After a quick chat with the agent, I bought the demo model for a good price. I’d taken a risk buying it because I didn’t have a chance to do proper testing, so I wasn’t sure if I would get pressure sores or have any other complications. Fortunately, there were none and it was a great decision. It has to be the most versatile chair on the market, with its light weight, easy manoeuvrability and folding capabilities; I’ve found none other like it.

  On the long-haul flights I had to fly in first class because it wasn’t possible for me to sit in economy. It was the first time for me overseas and the first for me in first class. I got a chance to see how the other half lives, but if only it could have been under better circumstances. Generally the airlines required me to board first, which meant I would switch out of my chair into an ‘aisle chair’ before hopping on the plane. Jake would lift me into the plane seat, then reposition and buckle me in. Each trip had its own individual challenges, but for the most part, all the airlines were more than happy to accommodate someone with my requirements. It was, of course, made easier with Jake, Loretta and Sarah to manually transfer me between chairs.

  Our first destination was New Zealand’s windiest city, Wellington. The formalities kicked off with a traditional Maori welcome and a tour of Parliament House, before we visited mining areas, dairies, sheep farms and wineries. The group of scholars I travelled with were a great bunch of men and women, all very passionate about agriculture and the sector they worked in. It was a pleasure getting to know them over the following seven weeks. With a few more days of sightseeing in the South Island and conference sessions based on New Zealand agriculture, we flew to Santiago, Chile, en route to Brazil and Mexico.

  In Brazil, we landed in Sao Paulo. I couldn’t believe the dense housing and over-population in this city of twenty-one million people. The population of Australia could have been squeezed into the shanty villages that dominated much of the city. We met with the Brazilian Agriculture Minister, who was also the owner of a Brazilian agricultural company that owned large parcels of land farming crops, cattle and sheep. He was very interested in the genetics of our sheep and cattle in both Australia and New Zealand. Over the next six days we drove through the country, stopping at several farms and feedlots. One 22,000-hectare farm, which grew crops of corn, sorghum, soya beans and tomatoes, employed a whopping 1300 people. It was a massive operation and included a 10,000-head feedlot, which was all under cover. Brazil was an amazing country and I couldn’t help but feel sad seeing the massive gap between wealth and poverty. One day when we were sightseeing in Sao Paulo, Sarah and I stopped to drop some coins into the lap of a homeless person.

  ‘I hope you are made of money,’ said the tour guide.

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he replied simply.

  As we turned the next street corner I was blown away by the sheer number of homeless and beggars lining both sides of the long street. It was very hard to wheel past each individual, unable to do anything to improve their situation.

  Most days of the seven-week trip had us up at 4 a.m. and going to bed close to midnight. It was like The Amazing Race on steroids, such was the hectic itinerary. There was little downtime, particularly for Sarah, Loretta and Jake who had to start earlier and finish later than everyone else. As the fast pace of the trip wasn’t wavering, the group began to take whatever opportunity we could to relax and grab a beer. One of the scholars was having his fortieth birthday in Rio de Janeiro, so we thought it was a good excuse one evening to head to a local nightspot. We found a wonderful outdoor place serving alcohol, positioned right on the water. It was a long way from the Tanami Desert and I was not ready for where the night would take us.

  Sitting at one of the tables, having some drinks to celebrate the birthday, a few of us noticed a group of very sexy young women standing against a wall alongside the bar. It soon became obvious they were prostitutes. The local men, whom we didn’t know, made eye contact with the girl they were interested in and out they would walk together. The scene unfolding before us was sad but still incredible, like something you read about or see in movies. Our group had a ball discussing the local culture around us, which was largely beer and sex. Probably because of our constant staring and chatter, one of the beautiful girls made her way over to our table. As she tried to talk to us in Portuguese, I spoke to our interpreter to see if he could ask the girl to give the birthday boy a kiss on the cheek and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. He nearly fell off his chair when this drop-dead gorgeous girl gave him a peck on the cheek and started serenading him in Portuguese. It was all in good fun and we had a nice laugh as the girl walked back to her friends. The conversation about the prostitutes came and went throughout the evening, but the topic was brought to our attention again when we left the bar and pulled up a stool at a beachside stand selling grog. After a while we realised the stand was doubling as a brothel outlet, as men came and went paying for services, but the women were nowhere to be seen. It was more exposure to the quite public sex industry that we were far from accustomed to. We certainly were a long way from home. As we sat there at 11 p.m., taking in our surrounds and enjoying the sounds of the beach, a muscled young man with chin stubble, along with make-up, long hair, breasts and a dress, sidled up to the group. It seemed our obvious infatuation with the whole spectacle was enough for the transvestite to approach us. He came over and started making eyes towards
one of the male Aussie scholars and what followed were some very awkward moments until the prostitute realised we weren’t actually interested. He seemed rather offended at having made the effort to come over only to be rejected. Most of us were buckled over in laughter at our strange encounter on the beach in Brazil.

  Our trip then took us further north to Mexico City. We had the chance to get an understanding of the local culture and visited a Catholic cathedral and some pyramids before we flew to the town of Obregon in the Sonora Valley, which is along the north-west coast of Mexico. It was one of the country’s few productive farming areas. We took a very early morning flight on a small plane and landed some hours later. Because we were always the first to get on and the last to get off a plane, I’d often stare out the window watching the ground crew below prepare the planes. On this occasion I was watching the crew unload the bags from the stowage space. There were no sophisticated conveyer belts; instead, the men simply threw all the bags onto the tarmac and then another person loaded them onto the trailers. They weren’t worried at all about damaging people’s belongings – bag by bag they tossed them out the small opening at the bottom of the plane. I was grateful I didn’t have anything breakable in my bags until I saw my wheelchair cop the same dismount. It flew through the air and skidded to a stop on its side on the tarmac. Luckily, the airline crew didn’t understand English or they would have received a strong lesson in Aussie obscenities. The same baggage handlers turned up to help me disembark, only this wouldn’t be the normal process. A fridge trolley was wheeled in and I was lowered down so I was in a squatting position at the base of the trolley. They then strapped me to the metal bars like a sack of potatoes and numerous people lifted me down the stairs to the tarmac. I was just happy they didn’t throw me out the door like they did my chair.

  Once we had a chance to look closely at the wheelchair, we discovered the back-rest canes, which braced my back in the right position, were bent. There was no way I could now sit in the chair without easily falling out again. The conversation began as a heated discussion between Sarah, Jake and the airline staff about the damage to my chair, and ended up being an all-out argument, English versus Spanish. A helpful passer-by, who we later discovered was actually our group’s assigned interpreter, began arguing with the staff on our behalf. We told them we had seen the rough treatment that the chair had received on the tarmac and it was now unusable, while they retorted by telling us the chair should have been transported in a wooden box. The argument then moved to who was going to pay for the damage, the airline or our travel insurance. As we were talking, five police officers carrying machine guns surrounded us, me still in the crouched position. The situation was tense. All of us found the stand-off very confronting, to say the least, and it was finally resolved with the help of the interpreter negotiating with the airline’s manager to have the chair fixed in a local workshop. So Jake lifted me into the chair and pushed me outside while Sarah and Loretta held me so I wouldn’t fall forward until we got into the car park. Instead of going to the workshop, we put the chair’s back-rest canes on the gutter and drove the hire bus over the bent area until it was straight again. With some bush mechanics we had fixed the chair as good as we could, and we went on our way. We didn’t end up taking it to any workshops, and even well after we returned to Australia I was still using that same back rest.

  And so the marathon trip continued into the United States, Canada, France and Scotland. Every place we visited offered different ideas or perspectives on sustainable food production for the group to take in. While our meetings and dinners were all very formal and prestigious, the behind-the-scenes travel was anything but. Early morning or late night flights had us very tired and jetlagged towards the end of the seven weeks. Although I could fall asleep in the chair while travelling, Sarah, Loretta and Jake had to keep working until I was in bed at the hotel, and again they would rise before everyone else to get me prepared for the day ahead. A usual overnight stay would involve finding either a ‘step up’ or ‘step down’ transformer for the local power supply, charging the wheelchair, pumping up my air mattress to sleep on, writing my blog and taking notes for my report. Unless there was a late start on our itinerary for the day, the four of us never made a hotel breakfast, instead just opting to grab something on the way to our engagement. Apparently all the other scholars put on significant weight from so much good eating, whereas I was the only scholar to actually lose weight. This amazing overseas whirlwind trip opened my eyes in so many ways. From the various local cultures and the differing government policies on agriculture to the awe-inspiring multimillion dollar cooperatives and the family-run beef farms in each country, the experience was extraordinary.

  My next visit to the United States as part of Nuffield was for six weeks, in August and September 2011. While we still maintained a busy schedule like the first trip, it was a lot less hectic. This time, I was able to bring along Braxton and Lawson, as well my two cousins, Luke Cook and Crystal Cook, who had offered to help me out. We tried hard to hire a wheelchair-accessible van, but without proof of permanent residency we couldn’t take out insurance so we had to settle for a normal van. Luke, Sarah and Crystal chucked me up in the front seat and our great American adventure began. We covered nine states by basically driving in a large loop from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado through to Utah, Nevada, California, down to New Mexico and back through Texas, with a quick look in Louisiana. My one aim was to visit organisations and individuals who were able to offer me some insight into how farmers and graziers could continue to work despite being disabled. A highlight was the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Oklahoma, which directs funding towards research and innovation in agriculture, among other things. As part of my visit to the foundation’s headquarters, I also gave a presentation on my life and scholarship thus far in an auditorium with more than 200 people in the audience, which was a lot more than what I was expecting. It was fascinating to see some of the technology currently being developed that could easily be modified to suit a C4 quadriplegic. Also in Oklahoma, I met grain and beef farmer John Enns who was a T12 paraplegic. John was able to show me some of the tools he used around the farm, including a lift into his tractor and some hay forks connected to the back of a ute. It was a fantastic visit to a ranch where a fellow disabled farmer was making such a go at running his operation. In Kansas, we stopped by the Molly Manufacturing plant, which built cattle-handling equipment, from crushes and races to the famous, all-American turret gates that are powered by hydraulics and operated by remote control. The owner, John Mollhagon, showed us through his factory and gave me a demonstration of just how easy it was to operate the equipment.

  Towards the end of the trip, the kids began to tire of the constant travel. We played whatever games we could in the car, including ‘spot the animal’, but somehow Braxton would always manage to find one in no time at all. I thought I had the boys stumped driving through the desolate country of Utah, where I assumed nothing could survive. I was looking out the window with a smile, thinking this game could last for hours, until Braxton spotted a deer. Out in the middle of nowhere, without a blade of grass or tree shade for kilometres, there stood a deer beside the road looking rather miserable. So my hope of finding a game to distract the kids on the long drive through Utah was lost.

  We were on our way to the Arches National Park, figuring it might be just the rest everyone needed. The park is named after the sandstone, mountainous country featuring natural arches in the landscape. After many hours of driving we finally pulled up at the national park entrance. We grabbed our water bottles and were locking up the van when we noticed some cyclists walking past wearing barely any clothing at all. The female cyclist wore a bikini, while the guys were sporting the very fashionable budgie smugglers. As they passed, my boys let out a little nervous giggle, which led to us daring Luke to strip off also. Luke is a fit, good-looking and charismatic young bloke and happily took up the challenge. With him only wearing his jocks, thongs, c
ap and sunglasses we began our walk to one of the lookouts.

  It was a terribly funny walk through the park, as passers-by turned to stare at Luke in his white grandpa jocks and also at me in the wheelchair. I’m sure it was quite an unusual sight. Our laughter and jokes continued until a female park ranger walked towards us on the path. She moved over to allow me past and Luke couldn’t resist having a chat.

  ‘Excuse me, sweetheart,’ said Luke, as I tried to keep moving away. ‘Can I get a photo with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, where are you from?’ asked the ranger, resting her right elbow on a pistol in her belt holster.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ replied Luke, playing up his Aussie accent. ‘We’re from the desert in Australia.’

  ‘OK. I don’t know what the rules are in Australia,’ said the ranger patiently. ‘But here in America, in the public setting of a national park, it’s not acceptable to wear just underwear.’