After the flood: mopping up in the land of Oz

Australian blogger Mia G Vayner shares with Disability Now, her experience of life as a disabled Aussie and how she fared during the recent Queensland floods

Most people call me Mia because they can’t pronounce my full name.  I was born on what we Aussies call a cattle station, “a ranch” so large you can fit Ireland in it three times. I knew two things from an early age 1) that I wanted to be a chef and a damn good one and 2) that getting married and walking down the aisle wasn’t for me…unless there was another girl meeting me at the end.

I achieved black belts in judo and karate before I could drive so when in my 40s, the only gift my family gave me that they didn’t take back, was a degenerative nerve disorder that had me from dojo to wheelchair, I screamed at the universe. Within five years the wheelchair was permanent and the rage was out of control. My ever loving spouse suggested I either get a really good legal eagle or write to vent, so disabledaccessdenied.wordpress.com was born.

Before any of us knew what a blog was, Australia was the perfect place to be for a gal who was trying to stay away from a life she didn’t want.

I learned to surf and to sail and if you get to the Sunshine Coast and you happen to be in a wheelchair you can do both too. There are groups whose goal is to help disabled folks ride that “perfect tube.”

Australia has all the bells and whistles when it comes to laws guaranteeing the rights of the disabled people. That being said, once you’re in these marble halls of knowledge and places of employment, behind closed doors the attempts to skirt around doing anything that may cost more to put in place is as common here as anywhere in the world.

An acquaintance who works for The Sunshine Coast Regional Council here in Queensland found the disabled toilet was broken. The powers that be decided repairs were not in the budget so he was forced to wheel himself a city block away and use a disgusting public bathroom that was more at home as a shooting gallery for junkies than a sanitary facility.

Since the 70s all universities have had ramps and disabled facilities built and are fairly well kept up. Alas the young amongst us are not so lucky. As a parent of a disabled child, I can tell you most are shuttled off to special schools so as to not confuse the mainstream teachers. 

Are we integrated or segregated? Well there are no hypothetical burning crosses on our lawns, but when recently my main squeeze and I went to a very shi-shi restaurant that had assured us via phone they were accessible, she could walk in the front door and I was directed 100 yards up the street, 50 yards down the lane and 100 yards back to enter through the kitchen past the dumpster. When I was a kid in the outback I still remember the pub had a sign, “dogs welcome, blacks go around back”. When we got to that restaurant I empathized with Aboriginals and hoped to god there wasn’t a dog taking our booking.

When I returned to Australia following the obligatory trip abroad, I chose Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast. I mean, the name says it all. Then, a month after our arrival the floods hit. I rang the SES (State Emergency Services) to tell them that I, a person in a wheelchair was in the flood zone. I asked should I be put on some kind of list so they knew to come and get me? Makes sense, right? Well, the rescuer answering the phone informed me if they did that for wheelchair folks, everyone would want special help. Their suggestion was to tell me to then call the police. The police informed me if the flood were committing a crime they were interested, otherwise call the hospital. The hospital were the only ones to make sense. They informed me they were so busy preparing to triage the large numbers of expected casualties, they couldn’t help so in my chair I sat watching the water rise.

Over the first two days the waters reached our lounge room step several times. It was during the worst of these times that I, for a second, could empathize with people in places like New Orleans during Katrina, or countries hit by tsunamis where you wonder if anyone is going to come. There isn’t much that scares me, I’ve lived and worked in some fairly rough places but then I was 6 ft 3 and able to handle myself. These days I have wheels under my ass and unfortunately no floaters. 

Then a group who normally only works with the intellectually disabled community stepped up and came to the rescue. The rest of my time during the floods we were trapped in our flat, our yards were destroyed, my veggie garden had become the property of a house three blocks away, and if it weren’t for the heroic work of volunteers from the mental health group S.C.I.L.S. who helped by digging drainage, I would be sitting in a hostel with no personal belongings left. My heroes were not the state emergency services or the police, they were people more at home teaching the intellectually disabled to shop or operate a bank account, while the emergency services and firefighters were touted as the heroes of the day.

The waters dropped and the media heralded a return to normal everyday life and in a state that has the motto “beautiful one day fantastic the next,” that to most would be a bonus. But if you’re in a wheelchair or have limited mobility in the state of Queensland the most basic of everyday tasks can be as dangerous as the floods and as difficult to organise as the landing at Normandy.

• Check out Mia’s blog at disabledaccessdenied.wordpress.com