00:06Some people are born to be farmers and Alex Wilson is one of them.
00:12I might go see if Tiara wants to talk to me.
00:16Do you want me to bring her out?
00:18I might just bloody poke in there.
00:21Alex grew up here at Dugendan in Queensland's Scenic Rim.
00:25But getting around on the farm to do all the things that he loves isn't as easy as it once
00:31was.
00:31After an accident just prior to Christmas in 2024 left the teenager paralysed.
00:38The then 17-year-old was attempting to push a hay bale by himself in the hay shed.
00:44It fell, crushing his T9 vertebra, leaving him with no feeling from the chest down.
00:51I've been around round bales my whole life and always been told they're dangerous things.
00:56Like, you know, they're 300 odd kilos.
00:59And, yeah, and it was just a mix of tiredness and just a lapse of concentration, I suppose.
01:06And then, yeah, things just didn't go my way.
01:08Been hard to handle. Been very hard to handle.
01:11There's not a moment goes by where I don't, you know, think about how things have changed.
01:19But pretty soon Alex had made it clear that a broken vertebra was not also about to break his spirit.
01:27If Alex had been a woe is me sort of kid, it would have been a very different experience.
01:33He said to us very early on in coming into the hospital,
01:37if you're going to cry, don't come. I don't want that.
01:41Despite spending six months of his senior year literally laid up in hospital,
01:46incredibly, Alex was still successful at getting into university.
01:51And he's now studying law and agriculture in Armidale.
01:55And the farm will still be here if and when Alex finds his way back home.
02:03His big sister and biggest supporter, Gabrielle, is certain the future of the family farm is in safe hands.
02:12I've never really been one for the farm work. I would do what I had to, but it was not
02:19my thing.
02:19But Alex has always loved it so much.
02:22I see him going wherever he feels will bring him the most money
02:26and then he will come back to doing what he loves to do.
02:29It's going to be a forever passion sort of thing.
02:32And they say if you chase your passions and work in your passions,
02:35you never work a day in your life. So regardless of what state I'm in,
02:39I still want to be a part of ag sort of thing.
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