Johnny’s Story

Johnny and Charlie are a positive, bright young couple from New Zealand. They had taken on their new lives in Australia with enthusiasm, were newly engaged and set to visit their family back home to celebrate this next chapter of their lives.  

However, just before they were about to fly home, Johnny and Charlie were faced with their biggest challenge.  

Johnny suffered a freak surfing accident at Duranbah Beach in northern New South Wales. He was thrown off his board and smashed against the sandbank, and surfacing without having any feeling of his legs. Johnny would soon find out he had suffered a spinal cord injury which had left him paralysed from the waist down.  

“There was a moment where I was getting loaded into the ambulance and my leg kind of fell off the table. At that point I knew something pretty serious had happened,” Johnny said.  

Fellow surfers that helped Johnny back to shore contacted the ambulance and Johnny’s partner Charlie, who was immediately by Johnny’s side.  

“I felt a lot of gratitude that I was arriving and he was alive,” Charlie said. 

“I was under no illusion that I could have arrived to a very different scene.” 

For Johnny, he was swarmed with thoughts of “why me” and worried about his partner Charlie. However, after his surgery and his six-month recovery at a hospital in Brisbane, the couple found an unexpected hurdle with their financial situation. 

At the time Johnny and Charlie were living in a three-story townhouse on the Gold Coast which was no longer accessible to wheelchair-bound Johnny.  They had to urgently find a new place to live. 

Johnny had been out of New Zealand too long to be eligible for the country’s funding support and not in Australia long enough to apply for NDIS.  

The couple worked hard trying to find other avenues of funding support, facing rejection after rejection, with Charlie taking on a lot of the stress to allow Johnny to focus on his recovery. 

That’s where Youngcare stepped in. Johnny was granted a Moving Home Grant to help pay for the bond of a new, more accessible apartment and to help pay for a new fridge to fit the new kitchen dimensions.  

“When we got the yes from Youngcare, it almost didn’t feel real.  I had got so used to the word ‘no’,” Charlie said. 

Youngcare also awarded Johnny a grant to modify a car so he would be able to drive without having to rely on others. 

“I was incredibly grateful. I didn’t really realise how much being so reliant on someone else to drive me was affecting my mind state. It gave me so much independence,” Johnny said.  

“Before I was relying on my partner to drive me everywhere.  Now, I can go to my appointments by myself, do the shopping, visit friends and go visit the surf.” 

“It’s been huge, not only for my independence but for our relationship as well,” he said. 

Johnny and Charlie say they are taking things day by day, focusing on what’s within their control and pushing through their hardest days together. 

“Youngcare really gave us hope. If we could get one yes, we knew that we could get more,” Charlie said. 

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