This morning while stumbling through the web looking for information on Rob Cook, our cowboy and inspiration in Accidentally Outback, I discovered blogs written by some of his mates in a little known field – the Australian Sport Rotorcraft Association Forum – with names like ‘Birdy’ and “Chopper Reid”, there are conversations between fellow ‘gyro and chopper pilots’ in the weeks immediately after Rob’s accident in late 2008.
They speak of a gentleman, and someone who they say they’d trust their life with, and talk about his wife Sarah’s commitment in the hospital as unknown injuries confine her husband to a breathing machine and countless other support systems to keep him going. “They wheel him out to the courtyard so he can see the sky.”
How do you not feel teary at the thought of a strapping young grazier, alive with youth and a love of the land, two young sons and millions of acres on the edge of the Tanami Desert, struck by misfortune in a chopper accident which saw the pilot walk free, almost without a scratch?
Well, speak to Rob and he’ll soon sort you out…but more on that later…
I first met Rob Cook and two of his brothers, as they were preparing to enter the rodeo ring at Daly Waters in the Northern Territory. What struck me, like many of those who wrote on that aero blog, was that he was a gentleman, a well-brought up young man…rare these days. As he donned his chaps and answered my curious journalist’s questions, he mentioned he would soon retire from the bull riding circuit, “it’s too dangerous, my fiancé wants me to stop.”
And now, that same fiancé, now wife and mother is Rob’s primary carer.
At this point of a story a journalist’s instinct is to draw you in to the sadness and sorrow, the tragic whys…and the searching for answers in a situation that has none. But I’d like to take a leaf out of Rob’s book, and look at the positives in this situation. Because it’s people like Rob Cook, and Sarah, (who I’m yet to meet, but already respect), that put every little whingey moment in life into perspective.
Rob Cook could be any one of us…young people with families living a life they have always dreamed of, who are handed a situation, a BIG situation, and refuse to accept it as the way it has to be.
I’m not sure there are many people who could have faced the moments immediately after the chopper crash that day, and survived it. I’m certain that many would never have made the leaps and bounds in recovery all those months without leaving hospital reliant on an oxygen machine and a swathe of pain killers to keep going.
But the same grit and determination that saw Rob survive countless injuries as an Australian bull riding champion, must have come into good use that day in 2008 and beyond, because the man who could make pastoral country in the arid heart of the country productive, has continued to make bounds in life that astonish those around him.
Rob could quite easily allow himself to slip into some form of apathy and disillusioned pallor…but instead he’s fighting all the way to keep giving. In a physical condition that now means he has to be ‘helped’ all the time, this man has grimly, fiercely fought back so that he too can keep giving.
While he might not be able to physically muster the cattle, through study, specifically the Nuffield Scholarship, he will use his brain to contribute knowledge.
Through his experience as a man in a wheelchair, a farmer, grazier and soon to be traveller, he will help men and women in the same situation find solutions and inspiration.
For the man who refuses to stop giving in every capacity possible, it’s now up to the Australian business sector to give a little back. And when you put it in perspective, $250,000 to get Rob and three carers overseas isn’t that much to ask for when he’s put in so much effort to be here…is it?
To support Rob’s mission, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
About the accident:
More about the chopper crash:
http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/1715.html
Australian Sport Rotorcraft Association Forum
http://www.asra.org.au/smf/index.php?topic=2443.0
