Episode 25: All Abilities Watersports

Download the transcript for this episode (.doc)

0:00 Carers Queensland announcement:  Want to know more about the National Disability Insurance Scheme?  A chat with a Local Area Co-ordinator can help you understand the NDIS, whether it’s right for you, and how to apply for access.  Book a spot at LAC in Community, a free service from Carers Queensland.  Find out more, check for events coming up near you, and book your spot online at carersqld.com.au.  You can also call us on 1300 999 636. 

0:40 Voiceover: Choice and Control, a podcast celebrating people with disability.  Brought to you by Carers Queensland, NDIS Local Area Coordination Partner in the Community.   

We talk about how sport is good for your mental health, physical health, it’s a great way to make friends… but it’s also enormous fun, especially the rush of something like water skiing.  Chris Beckett’s family is big on water skiing, and he founded the All Abilities Water Sports Club to make sure everybody in the family, and the community, has a chance to have a go.  They’re based in Townsville, and recently did a trip through an area where there’s aren’t always a lot of options for people with disability: the vast inland expanse of north western Queensland. 

1:25 Chris Beckett:  So we started this club back in 2018 when we initially started, and we’d seen a need for a broader group of people to be captured to participate in water skiing.  We’ve got children with disabilities ourselves, and we’ve seen the need for our children to be involved in that sport of water skiing which we love.  We had to start another club because the current club we were in at the time didn’t facilitate the disabled side of it.  So we’ve seen a huge need, and there was a big gap there so we started All Abilities Water Sports to capture those who wanted to take part in the disabled water skiing.   

We had to think outside the square.  There were other people involved, initially when we started the club we got Sporting Wheelies Queensland involved.  They came along and helped and assisted us with the disabled side of it, so we could understand it more, so we could try and do the best we could to capture the most from the disabled people to get them out and about on the water. 

2:25 Jodie van de Wetering: And what does it involve, how does accessible water skiing differ from the mainstream version? 

2:31 Chris:  It can differ quite a lot, and it can still be mainstream skiing, disabled people can still do mainstream skiing.  We’ve got leg amputees who we take skiing on double skis, like the traditional ski, but for those that don’t have the ability to ski in the traditional way we have the adaptive sit skis.  That allows them to be on the water, to water ski, to feel that walking on water feeling and sensation that we get.  So we’ve had to adapt that so that people can still water ski.   

Sit skis are $2500 each, so it is expensive.  We actually make them now here in Townsville. I’ve set up a mould where I can actually make the equipment because there’s no-one in Australia now that actually makes them anymore.  All the businesses in Australia were sold off overseas.  So we’ve seen a need to make them here, to keep it in-house, to make it more affordable for those people who want an adaptive ski.  We can actually make them here in Townsville which makes it more affordable for people to continue in the sport.   

3:29 Jodie:  I’ve heard of a niche but that’s fantastic. 

3:30 Chris: Yeah. 

3:31 Jodie: Danielle from Mt Isa has cerebral palsy, she’s one of the people who headed to the lake when All Abilities Water Sports did their recent tour through the north west. 

3:42 Danielle: So my family has always been into water skiing, my Dad said his first love was for Mum but his second love is for Lake Moondarra and Mt Isa.  Dad’s always been into water skiing and with that I grew up around the water, plus horses, and I always was sitting back.  I always tried, I never had the leg strength to get up on the skis.  My siblings managed to water ski, wakeboard and a few other things, and I never managed to get up, I only managed to get on the knee boards.  I was quite disheartened that I was never able to do that, so when Dad told me that Chris was coming with the All Abilities Water Ski I was super happy and super excited because I was hopefully going to be able to water ski. 

4:37 Jodie: So that was your first time being able to water ski properly? 

4:39 Danielle:  Yes, yes.  There was one time, but that was with Les Waters on the boom bar, and that poor man had to hold me up to support me while I was up skiing.  Mum’s got a story about how you could see his arm muscles bulging trying to support me, to get me up.  So yeah, that was the only time I had ever managed to do that but this time was absolutely incredible, amazing. 

5:15 Jodie: That’s fantastic.  How does it feel? 

5:16 Danielle: It was absolutely amazing, brilliant, I loved it.  When I was out on the water I was looking around on the side of the banks to see what was happening and I was also waving to people. I was so happy, even though in some of the photos it doesn’t look like I was happy, I was super happy, super proud. It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to do it again. 

5:44 Jodie: And that must be such rewarding feedback, Chris, knowing what a difference it’s making? 

5:47 Chris: It certainly is.  You know, to be included is a huge, huge part of our club.  Because everyone’s got the right, and everyone deserves the right, to have the opportunity to participate.  There’s nothing worse than sitting on the bank and not being part of something.  When you’ve got a passion and your family’s got a passion to be on water you’ve got to be included and that’s where you have to think outside the square.  Okay what are we going to do to get these people included? The adaptive sit ski is the way to go because they get to experience the exact same feeling of walking on water like we do.  They just do it slightly different, but they’re still included and they’re still part of. 

Water skiing is a family sport so there’s something for everyone to do, and to have Danielle involved and actually ski and take part is absolutely amazing.  The smiles on everyone’s faces that day was incredible. 

6:40 Jodie: Considering you’re going from Townsville to Mt Isa, that’s a fair hike, there must be the demand there to justify that kind of effort? 

6:45 Chris: I believe there’s a huge demand there actually.  What we found on that tour we did, because we stopped at Hughenden, Richmond, Cloncurry and Mt Isa, a lot of people still have got the mindset that you’ve got to be a super fit athletic person, you’ve got have a boat, you’ve got to have all the ski gear to do it and we’re trying to change that mindset.  You don’t have to have all that to participate, you’ve just got to have the determination and be willing to have a go because we’ve got the boats, we’ve got the gear, we’ve got the people in Mt Isa and at different stops along the way who are willing to help. 

So it’s about determination and having a go and to be included.  We’re just trying to change that mindset that you don’t have to be a super fit athlete or you don’t have to have a $100,000 ski boat or anything to have a go.  And we’ve shown that on that tour, that it’s for anyone and everyone, from 5 to 95 can participate in water skiing.   

The feedback we received has been fantastic and we have actually started the planning process now for an event in Hughenden, they’ve asked us to go back and do a two-day event in Hughenden in late February.  So we’re starting to plan that now which is great because there’s so many people that want to have a go.  

We’re going to change the way that we do the tour.  So Hughenden is going to be a two-day event and then so forth, but it’s going to be spread out over the year because it was a massive effort to do that whole tour in 2 ½ weeks.  We feel if we had more time at each stop, we could actually include more people and get more people involved. 

8:15 Jodie: Danielle I’m going to come back to you for a sec, water skiing is pretty big in Mt Isa, does it help now having this accessible opportunity that more people can get involved? 

8:23 Danielle: Definitely, definitely.  Yeah it’s really, really good to see so many seeing these accessible options come out for people who have diverse abilities.  A few people at work saw the pictures of me doing it and they said they wouldn’t be able to do what I did, but I said ‘you could probably could do what I did!’ 

8:43 Jodie:  It does take a lot of organisation and it’s also the case that if you’ve been told ‘it can’t be done, it’s too difficult, you can’t do it’, it is a big step to then say ‘no actually, I can do this’.  That’s a big step to take if you’ve been told over and over again you can’t. 

9:02 Danielle:  I always had the motto when I was younger when I was trying to get up on the normal skis ‘I can do it, I know I can do it’ so yeah, so that’s always been my motto. 

9:13 Chris: We’ve got a motto in our club that it’s not a disability, it’s a different ability. 

Yeah. 

It’s not a disability, it just means you’ve got to do it a bit different and you just need to think outside the square.  And like Danielle said it’s a mindset, you’ve got to be in the right mindset.  People are going to put you down and say it can’t be done but if you’ve got the right mindset you can do anything.  Danielle did it, she had the right mindset, she was determined to do it.  We had the equipment, had the right mindset, and she achieved it and ticked that box.  So that’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic. 

9:47 Danielle: Thank you. 

9:49 Chris:  It’s all good.  But I guess for a lot of people it can be scary.  Going on the water knowing that you’ve got a disability, it can be a scary thing.  As a coach I’ve got to build, it’s hard, you’ve got to build that trust with the person to get them in the right mindset and to get them used to the feel of being on the water.  Once you can get past that, then they’re willing to have a go.  I think Danielle is actually inspiring people in Mt Isa.  They’ve seen it done now and they go ‘well hang on, she’s done it.  It didn’t look that hard, it didn’t look that scary, she was laughing, she was smiling let’s have a go!’ So next time yeah we’re going to hopefully plan it a bit differently to make it a better day and get more people involved, and get more people on the water. 

10:38 Danielle:  It seems difficult, it’s not difficult at all.  Like, you’ve just got to have, as Chris was saying and I was saying, have the correct mindset to do it. 

10:47 Jodie: And Chris what do you need now as an organisation to help make this happen and keep it going and reaching more and more people who need it? 

10:55 Chris: Well the biggest thing for us is finding volunteers at the moment to assist.  A lot of people with disabilities that come to events do have their own carers and so forth, which is great because they’re the kind of people that understand the person’s need more than anyone. They work with them, they support them daily, and the support workers know that person better than anyone on what they need and so forth.  They know the words to use to help encourage and stuff, whereas for us we’re still learning ways of communicating and things like that.  We’ve got vision impaired skiers, we’ve got paraplegics, we’ve got amputees, we’ve got people with cerebral palsy, it’s a wide range.  But finding volunteers to help run the event is a big thing for us.   

And financially, to do that tour out west was about $13,500 which we raised here, which was great and it was good to have the Councils on board so we could put a lot of free events on which was great.  There was no cost involved to people to take part, and that’s a big part too.  People think it’s going to be expensive you know, you’re talking boats, you’re talking specialised equipment and people think it’s going to be really expensive, it doesn’t have to be because we’ve got all the equipment and we’ve got the boats.   

We’re big on networking, so we want to spread our message wider.  And Danielle and the Mt Isa Water Ski Club are doing that by having us out there and getting that message out as well that you need to change your mindset because you don’t have to have an expensive boat and everything, we just need people that have got the right attitude to have a go.  It can be a case of just getting someone to sit in the edge of the water, because let’s face it water is the best therapy for anything.  You sit in the water, feeling weightless, like, there’s no weight on your shoulders, no nothing, you sit there and you’re just floating and that starts the process.  Then that changes their mindset to think ‘well hang on, I can do it, I’m in the water’ and it’s just a case of putting the ski under them and away they go and then it’s happening.  

 So if we can spread the word, let people know that yes we are out there, we’re a social ski club for anyone from 5 to 95, it doesn’t matter what ability you’re at, we’re there to help.  We can travel and we will travel is there’s a need for it.  So if there’s people in other regions that haven’t seen the adaptive ski or haven’t had that opportunity to get on the water and experience a day on the water, get in contact with us via email, by our Facebook page, let us know, and we will work with them to see what we can do to get their people, their participants, on the water in a safe environment. 

13:31 Danielle:  You can do it.  Like, with me I had two people on either side supporting me on both days I was doing it, so there’s people there supporting you, you can do it, it’s easy enough to do.  With the ski you can hook with the handle to, what is it Chris…? 

13:52 Chris: So the adaptive ski’s got a tow hook on it,  we can actually hook it on.  So for people who are arm amputees or don’t have upper body strength to hold the rope, we can actually hook it on.  So we’ve got all these little things in place to cater for everyone, so if they don’t have the upper body strength that doesn’t matter, they don’t have to hold the rope, they can just hook it on and still water ski.  If they want to disconnect that rope and hold on like Danielle did, they can do that, that options there so all the options are there. 

14:22 Jodie:  It sounds like you’ve tried to take as many different forms of ability into account as possible? 

14:29 Chris:  I think you have to because let’s face it, everyone’s different.  We’re all different and it would be boring if we were the same.  We are all different, we all ski different, we’ve all got different strengths, we’ve all got different abilities.  So you’ve got to sort of cater for everyone, and having those options allows us to get more people on the water to experience that on water feeling. 

14:48 Danielle: Nobody’s normal, everyone’s got a diverse ability or a different ability, so yeah anyone can water ski if they want to, if they’ve got the correct mindset and they just believe that they can do it. 

15:04 Jodie:  If you’d like to find out more about the All Abilities Water Sports Club or maybe get in touch and find out how you can get involved head to Facebook and look for All Abilities Water Sports. 

December 3rd is International Day of People with Disability.  Come and celebrate with Carers Queensland, your NDIS Local Area Coordination Partner in the Community.   

In Ipswich we’ll be at the Riverlink Shopping Centre from 10-2 with the Be Your Own Boss marketplace.  Our Be Your Own Boss project empowers, educates and supports people with disability to establish and build their own micro business.  It’s a great way to earn some money, increase your self-confidence, and achieve greater independence and control.  The marketplace will be showcasing micro businesses already running, so you can support businesses run by people with disability.   

Meanwhile up in Rockhampton we’re celebrating International Day of People with Disability with a free screening of the film Wonder.  There will be guest speakers, information and resources available, and the free film screening as well.   

If you’d like to find out more or register for either of these events head to our website at carersqld.com.au and look for Events.   

Carers Queensland is also pleased to support All Access Day at the Beach, celebrating International Day of People with Disability at Mooloolaba Beach in front of the surf lifesaving club.  From 10-3 there’ll be all sorts of good things to do: there’ll be activities for people of all abilities, extra beach matting in place, and four beach wheelchairs with a hoist so everybody can go for a spin on the sand.  It’s free, everybody’s welcome but you will need to book: to find out more head to the Sunshine Coast Council website at sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au.

Voiceover: Thanks for joining us at Choice and Control, a Carers Queensland podcast.  For more information about the National Disability Insurance Scheme or Carers Queensland, contact us online at carersqld.com.au.  You can call us on 1300 999 636 or head to Facebook and look for Carers Queensland NDIS. 

Mentioned in this episode 

•  All Abilities Water Sports Club 
• Carers Queensland website 
• Carers Queensland upcoming events and workshops 
• Carers Queensland NDIS on Facebook 

More from Choice and Control 

• • Apple Podcasts 
  • Spotify 
  • Google Podcasts 
  • YouTube 
  • On the Carers Queensland website