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Translator: Theresa Ranft Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
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This right here is a photo of me when I was 14 years old.
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Now, I know what you're thinking,
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'Dylan, mate,
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are you sure that's not Ryan Gosling?'
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(Laughter)
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But, unfortunately, no, this is a photo of me.
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Now, for a long time, I tried to delete this photo from my memory,
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and to be honest, do you blame me?
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Firstly, what the hell is going on with my hair there?
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I remember my mum's a hairdresser.
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I used to sit in the front seat of her car with a tub of gel and a hairbrush,
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and on the way to school every day, I'd sit there thinking,
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'Dylan, you have absolutely nailed it!'
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(Laughter)
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I still don't understand why she let me leave the car.
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Also, secondly,
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where the hell are my eyebrows?
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(Laughter)
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Now,
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unfortunately for me,
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I didn't grow any eyebrows until I was 17 years old.
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Now, I understand that I had completely no control over that,
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but, as you can imagine, it wasn't really helping my cause, was it?
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I also had braces.
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I also had my bed in the pantry,
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and I was a little bit on the overweight side.
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This was really the first time in my life
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that I was really struggling with my disability.
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Up until this age, I'd never really cared about the fact that I was in a wheelchair.
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Everybody was young, nobody really noticed it,
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and everything just went along pretty smoothly.
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But, at this time, things started to change.
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People started going to house parties.
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Boys started kissing girls, girls started kissing boys.
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Girls starting kissing girls,
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and occasionally, boys started kissing boys.
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But, absolutely nobody was kissing Dylan,
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I can tell you that much.
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And it was also about the first time
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that I really thought about myself as being weird because I had a disability.
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And, to be honest, that really sucked,
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and had a really big effect on absolutely everything that I did.
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I started having a crap time at school.
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It really started affecting my sporting career as well.
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For the first time in my life, I was really, really down on myself.
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And then, the next year, in Year 9, something happened.
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A mate of mine was having a house party.
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Now, this was a really good mate of mine.
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And previously, I'd never really been invited to that many house parties,
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and I thought, 'What a perfect opportunity to go to your first one.
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I'm absolutely going to kill it,
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and everybody will invite me to all the parties coming up ever since'.
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Now, the invites for the party came out, and what do you reckon happened?
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I didn't get one.
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I didn't get an invite.
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And I remember thinking to myself,
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'That is bullshit.
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Like, I'm actually really good friends with this guy,
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how could I not be invited to his party?'
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I was sitting at home the day of the party,
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and I went to myself, 'I just really, really want to go'.
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Now, back in the day when you're 15,16, it was super uncool and lame
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to text the person to ask if you can come to the party.
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The far more badass thing to do was simply turn up and jump the fence.
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(Laughter)
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Now, as you could imagine,
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jumping, it's not really my forte.
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And unless I had some kind of crane or, like, trampoline device ...
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(Laughter)
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there was no way in hell that I was getting over that fence.
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The only way to get in
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was to knock on the door and go through the front.
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Anyway, I sat at home and I'm like, 'Stuff it.
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I'm going to go and see what happens'.
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I go to the front door, knocked on the door, and my mate answered.
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And he had this really weird, shocked look on his face, like I was there.
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I remember thinking to myself, like, 'What have I done?
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Why didn't I sit at home and play N64, like I did every other Saturday night?'
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Anyway, he looked at me, and he said,
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'Dyl, mate, I'm so glad that you came.
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I didn't know if you could get in my house because of the stairs,
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so I didn't invite you'.
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I remember thinking to myself, 'Is that it?
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Is that genuinely the only reason that I wasn't invited?'
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Anyway, I went in that house party,
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absolutely crushed it, had an awesome time.
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(Laughter)
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I remember the next day, I woke up, and I was really bloody mad at myself.
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I was really mad at myself
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that I let my insecurities and my embarrassment about my disability
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I was really mad at myself that I believed this thing,
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this negative stigma that having a disability
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makes you weird, makes you different,
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and that's the only reason people don't want to hang out with you.
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I'm really mad at myself that I didn't just grow a set of balls,
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have some confidence, talk to my friends and educate them about my disability.
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Now, the only reason I wasn't invited that night
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wasn't because they didn't like me,
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but it was because I didn't tell them about my disability.
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I didn't tell them I could get up the stairs,
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and it'll all be fine.
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I sat at home for a whole year thinking these people didn't like me.
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The only reason that they did was because they weren't educated about disability,
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and I really didn't do anything to educate them on it.
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So, after that night, things really changed for me.
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I started being more social,
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I started getting a lot fitter,
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I started going out a lot more,
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and I even started kissing the odd girl or two.
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(Laughter)
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After that night, I made a pact with myself.
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I made a pact with myself
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to never, ever let my disability get in the way of what I wanted to do.
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I made a pact with myself to not be scared of my disability,
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but rather to embrace it in everything that I did.
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Because of that, I've been able to live a truly, incredibly awesome life.
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In 2008, I was lucky enough
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to win a gold medal at the Paralympic games,
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playing basketball for Australia - wheelchair basketball, believe it or not.
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This was incredible for me.
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Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to go to the Paralympic games.
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The Paralympics - for those who don't know -
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is the pinnacle of elite sport for people with disabilities.
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But a lot of people
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don't know the true meaning of the word 'Paralympic'.
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The word is actually split in two:
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the 'Olympic' part - which represents the Olympics,
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the pinnacle of sport -
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and the 'Para' part.
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There's a common misconception
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that the 'Para' part actually means paraplegic or paralysed,
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but this isn't the case.
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The 'Para' actually represents 'parallel',
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meaning the Paralympics runs parallel, or alongside, the Olympics.
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Same gold medals, same venues, same elite athletes, same time.
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The only difference is obviously we all have disabilities at the Paralympics.
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Now, this was awesome in Beijing for me.
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I was 17 years old at the time,
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so I was still doing my HSC or VCE while I was over there.
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To be 17 years old and sit on top of the podium with 12 of your best mates -
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guys that had lost limbs to cancer,
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other guys that had horrific accidents on their worksites
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so were left up in wheelchairs.
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Other guys who had car crashes and never be able to walk again
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and lost loved ones in the process.
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To sit on top of that podium and so proud of what we had done,
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singing that national anthem with tears in our eyes -
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it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
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It really was incredible and something I'll cherish forever.
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I've also got a bit of a name for myself
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as the dude that crowd surfs in his wheelchair at festivals.
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(Laughter)
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I've been very lucky to travel around the world
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attending different music festivals.
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Everybody knows me as,
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'You're the guy that crowd surfs in his wheelchair!'
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To be honest, the first [time] that I ever did this
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was completely out of necessity
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because I was sick and tired of sitting in the mosh pit
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and looking at all your asses all day.
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(Laughter)
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You don't understand how much that sucks after a while.
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But from the first time I did it, I was absolutely hooked.
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It's an incredible feeling, sitting on top of that crowd
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in what I like to call the best seat in the house.
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It really is incredible.
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I think it's a really cool metaphor for people with disabilities as well,
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what they can really do,
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getting out there, breaking the mould, doing what's unexpected of them.
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On a side note, I've only fallen out once.
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And don't worry, I didn't get any more disabled from the fall,
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so it's all good.
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(Laughter)
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Now,
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when I reflect on my life, I think back to when -
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I'm really happy that I can sit here now
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and think that all this stuff almost didn't happen to me.
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I remember back when I was 14, I think of 14-year-old Dylan, and I think
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I had these really low expectations of myself of what I could achieve.
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And I let that dictate what I did in everyday life.
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I think back to 14-year-old Dylan
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who thought of his disability as this really shitty burden
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that was really hard to overcome.
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I think back to 14-year-old Dylan,
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and I think I'm so lucky doing what I'm doing these days.
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I'm so glad that I could challenge my own perception
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about what I thought about disability.
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And to be honest, I can sit here in front of you all today
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and tell you 100% honest truth:
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if I ever had the chance to go back in time
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or eat some kind of magic pill and walk again,
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there's no way in hell you could pay me enough to do it.
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Because I absolutely love everything in my life,
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wheelchair or not.
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I wouldn't change it for the world.
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But, unfortunately, there are so many kids across the world, all around Australia
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that are really struggling socially because of their disabilities.
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Disability remains this thing that nobody wants to talk about.
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There's still this negative stigma
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that having this disability is this weird, unlucky, really ugly thing.
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And for kids with disability that don't have any confidence,
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it's really hard for them to get over this
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and get into the world and do what they want to do.
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And it really restricts everything that they want to achieve.
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There are heaps of problems in the world:
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poverty, refugees, same-sex marriage, gender equality.
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They're all very, very important things.
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But when the hell do you ever hear anything about disability?
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Or when do you ever turn on the TV
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and see the first news story about somebody with a disability?
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Or when do you turn on your TV and see a wheelchair TV presenter -
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sorry, a presenter in a wheelchair?
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Or somebody with cerebral palsy in our parliaments?
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Or an actual blind actor playing a blind actor,
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as opposed to some bloke who's just closing his eyes?
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(Laughter)
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Now, I remember when I was a kid,
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when I was struggling, when I was 14,
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I just wish I could have turned on my television
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and seen a guy in a wheelchair achieving.
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Because it would have made me realise that,
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'You know what? I could do that too! That, one day, could be me'.
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I wish I had a positive role model in the media
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where I could have seen somebody absolutely killing it,
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and that would've instilled the confidence in me
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to get out there and do whatever I want.
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I think it's really important moving forward that we, as a society,
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change our perception of disability away from this idea
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that it's this really bad, unlucky, weird thing,
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and stop being so scared to talk about it.
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We need to realise that it's okay to have any disability,
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and we need to further our expectations of what people with disabilities can do.
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Moving forward, I think in order to do that,
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we need to mainstream disability.
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Get people with disabilities into our mainstream media,
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and that will increase the visibility in a positive light.
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We need to make disability heaps more commonplace.
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We need to start the conversation about it,
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which will go a long way in normalising it.
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And then, who knows?
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Maybe one day, if we can do that,
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these kids, like me, like I used to be,
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won't be going through such a tough time.
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They won't be embarrassed about their disability ever again.
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They'll have the confidence to go out there and do whatever they want.
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But, as a society, we really have to hope they pick a much better haircut than that.
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Thank you.
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(Applause) (Cheers)
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