TRANSCRIPT
Sparks are flying at a workshop on the Gold Coast where volunteers are turning out rough terrain wheelchairs.
The wheelchairs are destined for developing countries, where a wheelchair can be life changing for people with disability, as inventor Des La Rance explains:
"Oh, the reward. When you hand a child a wheelchair, it just takes my breath away."
The former cabinet maker first devised the plan to make and donate wheelchairs, after a trip to Fiji in 1996.
"I couldn't believe what the children there were going through without a wheelchair. And one of them that really sticks to my mind is a 14-year-old girl walking around on her hands. We've said, what are you going to do now? And she said, I'm going to town. I've never been to town."
Almost 30 years later Mr La Rance’s project still mass produces robust wheelchairs from dumped and unwanted bicycles.
"The bicycles come in, they get cut up and machined to what we want and then they're all passed down through the line with spray painting."
And there’s no shortage of raw materials - with estimates up to half-a-million bicycles are discarded every year. Most end up in landfill. At the Surfers Sunrise Wheelchair Trust, skilled volunteers have turned out almost 12,000 wheelchairs, so far.
"We've delivered them to 31 different countries all over Asia, Africa, you name it, we've been there."
The latest shipment is bound for Sri Lanka, where catastrophic flooding creates extra hardship for people with limited mobility. Valluvan Thillairajah is a medical student and volunteer with Australian-based charity Vanni Hope, and currently delivering aid to flood victims there.
"With people who don't have mobility, they're literally unable to get away from it. And a lot of them unfortunately dying and being caught in the destruction, which is yeah really tough."
With many roads and paths destroyed in Sri Lanka, Mr Thillairajah says the generous gift of 121 wide-tyre wheelchairs is most welcome.
"They're rough terrain wheelchairs, which are really useful for us because especially in regions like the upcountry, you have to go uphill to get places."
For Trust chairman and Gold Coast local Geoff Croad it’s also about keeping unwanted bikes out of landfill.
"There was one building in Surfers [Paradise] that had like 40 to 50 bikes sitting in the basement. So, we're able to pick up 30 this morning, bring them back to the depot. We've probably put through the facility probably 40,000 bikes over the years. We use the back frame of the bike. We need two of those, two matching frames to form the basic wheelchair."
The design is so popular, Mr La Rance says the Rotary Club charity is swamped with orders.
"We just keep the containers rolling out. We've got people all over the world wanting these wheelchairs, so we're never going to fulfil the requests that are out there."
Three decades and thousands of chairs later, Mr La Rance can hardly believe the impact.
"No, I never imagined that at all. You’d need to experience the effect it has on a person er that never been able to walk. You give them a wheelchair and wheel them to wherever they want to go. So, it combines the family back together again as well."
It’s enough to make a retired tradie very proud!
