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Katie and Jimmy Hammond weren’t sure they’d make it to Cape York Peninsula’s famous tip, where a sign, visited by thousands of travellers each year, marks Australia’s northernmost point.
They’d driven hundreds of kilometres from their home in Woodford through remote terrain to reach the Cape. But the final stretch from the car park to the tip was a kilometre walk over beach and rocky headland – a practical challenge for two wheelchair users.
“I didn’t think we’d actually get to the sign,” Katie explains, “just getting to the beach at the top was as far as I thought we could get.”
With the help of strangers, husband and wife Katie and Jimmy Hammond made it to Cape York’s famous tip.
As they discussed how far their chairs might reach and the possibility of waiting for the tide to go out and hard sand to form, a crowd gathered and asked if they could help the couple reach the final point.
“We had a whole heap of people that we didn’t know become a really major part of that photo,” Katie says. “It was just absolutely beautiful.”
Katie and Jimmy Hammond call a sprawling 16-hectare property in Woodford, north of Brisbane, home. They’ve spent the last decade 4WDing, fishing, camping and road tripping across Queensland with their three kids.
Katie and Jimmy Hammond waited for the tide to recede and hard sand to form to attempt the final stretch.
As wheelchair users with spinal cord injuries, their adventures can look different to other Queensland families, but they’re determined to make it work all the same.
“I still feel like I can be adventurous,” Katie says. “It still feels like I can do anything.”
Katie grew up on Brisbane’s southside and recalls a childhood spent “roaming the bushlands” with her brothers.
“I was very outdoorsy. I walked everywhere, I loved to exercise, and I loved the beach,” she says.
Her spinal cord was injured in a car accident, aged just 16. She spent the next nine months at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, learning how to use a wheelchair and live without the use of half of her body.
“It was a quick introduction to the world of disability and adulthood,” Katie says.
Two years after the accident, she bought the property in Woodford and started camping by the river, a passion she hasn’t put down since.
Jimmy is a country boy by nature, hailing from Collinsville, a rural town about 90 kilometres inland of Bowen in north Queensland. He worked on properties, and rode bulls in rodeos, before injuring his spinal cord in a car accident aged 21.
“Me and another guy were heading into town on the weekend, and he just hit a pothole, lost control and rolled [the car],” Jimmy says. “It was quite an ordeal.”
The couple first met at the Princess Alexandra Hospital while Katie was working as peer support worker and Jimmy was recovering from his accident.
Like Katie, Jimmy spent eight months in the PAH’s spinal unit, grappling with the double “shell shock” of becoming a paraplegic, and moving from country Queensland to a major city.
“Being 21, you’re still so young, so you don’t really have a grasp or understanding of life,” he says.
“I’d always worked on properties, but I didn’t know if it was something I could ever return to. I thought I’d never be able to drive a 4WD drive again either.”
The pair met at the hospital while Jimmy was recovering and Katie was working as a lived experience peer support worker in the spinal unit. They reconnected five years later and started dating, giving birth to their daughter in 2017, and marrying the following year.
A typical camping set-up for the Hammonds.
Together with Katie’s two older children, the Hammond family spend holidays like many Queensland families – camping. Jimmy says they do make concessions.
“Any opportunity to go do something different is always on the board,” Jimmy says.
“For me, camping always used to be about really cutting off from the world and just going where there’s no phone service, by a river fishing, finding that quiet serenity.
“Nowadays with children involved, I sit there and think: Big4 Holiday Parks. They’re amazing.”
Katie, now a Spinal Life peer support team leader, advocates for other people with disabilities to explore the outdoors.
Katie and Jimmy have camped in tents and caravan parks across the state, from remote beaches frequented by crocodiles, to rural country towns, and want to show other people with spinal cord injuries and physical disabilities that the typical Queensland holiday is possible.
“It’s a case of figuring out what piques your interest, and what things need to be put in place to make that happen,” Katie says.
“What does that destination mean for you and your disability? What equipment are you going to have to take with you?
“You have to figure out what it is that you love to do and camping can be anything. You can camp, you can glamp, you can find yourself a cabin. You can do it however you want.”
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