Stuff Digital Edition

A passion for travel

Adventures bring fun and freedom

Alicia Kissick was so passionate about travel before the accident that landed her in a wheelchair that she wanted to make a career out of it. Originally from Whanga¯ rei, the 32-year-old had just earned a certificate that qualified her to work on cruise ships and superyachts when she arrived in North America on the OE that came to an abrupt end after she broke her back and neck.

At 24, Kissick had spent about a month backpacking around California when she caught a train to Vancouver for a friend’s surprise birthday party. She had been at the party for about an hour when she stepped out onto a landing over a fire escape for a cigarette, and a wooden board gave way beneath her.

‘‘I fell about 20 feet [six metres],’’ she says. ‘‘Initially I just felt a bit winded, but the next thing I knew I was at the hospital, and they were like ‘there’s a one per cent chance of you ever walking again’.’’

Having had her heart set on living and working overseas indefinitely, the news was devastating.

‘‘As a teenager all I ever wanted to do was get out of Wha¯ nga¯ rei and travel, and never look back really,’’ she says. ‘‘After I’d done Vancouver, I’d planned to work up the mountain in the snow for a season, and then go to France and get a job on a superyacht and travel around for a bit. Eventually, I wanted to be a travel guide somewhere because travel was basically what I lived for.’’

Instead, she found herself back in Whanga¯ rei, where she lived with her parents for a couple of years, successfully suing the landlord of the Vancouver property where she’d had her accident.

Desperate for a change of scenery, she convinced her boyfriend to move to Nelson with her, and slowly but surely made travel a big part of her life again.

In the nine years since, Kissick has travelled to many places around New Zealand, as well as to Melbourne and the United States – sometimes with her parents, sometimes with her partner Toby Waters and sometimes alone.

‘‘I’ve become quite independent,’’ she says. ‘‘With the level of injury I have, I probably shouldn’t be as independent as I am, but I’m strong and stubborn so if I want to do something I will find a way.’’

Her mother, she says, was more nervous about her first trip after the accident – to go to a gig with old friends in Wellington – than she was.

‘‘At the time, I needed a bit of help with the bathroom and stuff, and my mum worried a lot. She was like ‘I don’t know if you’re ready. I don’t know if you can do this. It’s going to be hard’, la de da. And I was like ‘we can just wing it. People in wheelchairs travel all the time.’ ’’

Kissick has got used to the process of boarding and disembarking planes as a wheelchair user, and drives a van adapted for her wheelchair, but does often struggle to find suitable accommodation.

She prefers staying at independently owned places to motels and hotels, but says they are often not well set up for wheelchair users.

‘‘When people say places are accessible, a lot aren’t, so you really have to speak to someone oneon-one.

‘‘In Tekapo, we’d talked to someone and they said the place was accessible, but I couldn’t even get my wheelchair into the bathroom when I got there, because of the setup. So you really have to educate them because a lot of the time it’s new to them.

‘‘The world’s not really set up for us. You get used to it, but you have to do a lot of pre-planning.’’

She’s spent so much time researching trips and reading blogs by travellers in wheelchairs that friends have suggested she set up a website on accessible travel.

‘‘But I just shut them down because I don’t want to live my life around my injury.’’

That injury certainly hasn’t stopped her doing all she wants to do on trips around New Zealand. On a recent South Island roadie, she and her partner played in the snow on Mt Hutt, went whale watching in Kaiko¯ ura, and sit-skiied on Franz Josef Glacier after taking a helicopter to the top.

Kissick was inspired to try sit-skiing after reading that Bailley Unahi, who broke her spine when a balcony collapsed on her at a Six60 concert in Dunedin in 2016, had done it.

An occupational therapy graduate, Unahi trains with the Wa¯ naka ski team at Cardrona on a sit-ski (a moulded bucket seat set on skis) and has her sights set on the Paralympics.

The helicopter tour operator initially told her she wouldn’t be able to get out on the glacier, but Making Trax, a not-for-profit organisation that assists disabled travellers, organised it so she could.

‘‘When I contacted the guy at Making Trax, he just booked it for me and it didn’t cost anything extra. So we flew to the top of the glacier and got out and my partner pushed me around a bit on the sit-ski. It was crazy to see how much the glacier had receded since I last visited when I was a teenager, but it was pretty cool.’’

Kissick enjoyed her first trip overseas since the accident so much, she says she would do it again in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the pandemic. She and partner Waters spent three weeks in North America, visiting New York, New Orleans and Canada.

‘‘Getting down to the subway [in New York] was a bit tricky, but other than that travel was pretty good. It was good having my partner there because he can lift me. He’s carried me up and down many flights of stairs. We always make it happen. But it’s

good for my psyche to know I can also travel by myself.’’

Kissick did just that to mark her 30th birthday, travelling to Melbourne, where she lived for a while before her accident, to spend time with friends.

‘‘I stayed in a hotel by myself, and did lots of research about the trams and getting around, and it worked out fine. It was really great. Like old times. I loved having that independence back. I’ve always liked to travel by myself because I can do what I want, when I want.’’

These days, Kissick regularly drives to Christchurch on her own for an appointment, staying for a couple of days to turn it into a mini break.

‘‘I’ll have a look around and do all my op shopping down there, so it’s always fun. I like having the time to myself.’’

She and Waters live in Nelson with their two dogs, often taking road trips up and down the coast, but Kissick still dreams of living overseas again.

Asked why travel is so important for her, she says it satisfies her love for learning about other countries and cultures, as well as her inherently restless nature.

‘‘I don’t like to stay in one place for too long, so it’s been really uncomfortable for me being in a wheelchair because it’s like ‘oh, now I have to buy a house and settle down’.

‘‘That’s totally not me, so I guess that’s what makes travel so important. It gives me that freedom and shows me I’m not stuck in one place forever.’’

She would love to move back to Melbourne or spend a year in the United Kingdom, but says Waters, a plumber, may take some convincing.

‘‘When we were in New York my partner said ‘oh I could live here’, and I was like ‘you would choose one of the most expensive places in the world to actually move to’. But it was a big step for him to move away from his family up north down to Nelson.’’

A silver living of the pandemic for the couple is that it is giving them the time to figure out a future plan that works well for them both.

‘‘My partner can get a British passport so to live over there would probably be the next thing I would like to do . . . I think he’d love it once he got over there. I’ve kind of introduced him to travelling because I’ve been like ‘‘I want to do this’’ and dragged him along. But once he’s got there, he actually has a great time.’’

For Kissick, ensuring travel remains a big part of her life is also about refusing to let her injury prevent her from living the life she envisaged for herself as a teen in Whanga¯ rei.

‘‘I want to be able to live my life, especially now a lot of possibilities have been taken away from me. I want to still be able to enjoy life because a lot [about] being in a wheelchair is not enjoyable. I do suffer from depression, and being stuck in one place doesn’t help. So when I see that I can actually go out and do things again, my psyche is a lot better. I’m a lot happier. I feel like I’m really doing something with my life.’’

Alicia’s top travel tips for wheelchair users

■ Call or email accommodation when booking to make sure the room is accessible.

■ Ask lots of questions about things such as bed height, lips and steps in the shower, and doorway widths.

■ Check out other disabled people’s travel blogs and accessible travel groups on social media.

■ Try to plan ahead and get a rough idea of things available to do in the area.

■ Be prepared and have a backup plan, just to be safe, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

■ Bring spare supplies and medication – finding replacements away from home can be tricky.

■ Ask airlines to handle your wheelchair with care. There have been countless times when I have forgotten and wound up with chunks taken out of my push rims.

■ Research transport options before you get there. Taxis can get very expensive, so if there’s accessible public transportation available, look into it. It’s also a great way to explore on your way to your destination.

Stuff Travel

en-nz

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282338273009743

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