Organising a disabled-friendly holiday

I thought I'd better do some preliminary planning for the Tasmania trip in December-January.  After all, the year is rushing past so fast I'm liable to miss most of it!

Previous family holidays have been camper-trailer based, which gave us a great deal of freedom to go where we wanted.  Best of all, it allowed us to make use of the 4WD to explore interesting tracks.  This year, we will not be able to use the 4WD / camper trailer combination because Anita needs her electric wheelchair all the time now.  We have a wheelchair accessible van, but it has no towbar so can't tow the camper trailer.  So what to do?  Tasmania is the destination, and the Internet is the key.

We can get to Tasmania via the Spirit of Tasmania ferry service from Melbourne to Devonport, so that part is easy.  The thorny bit is accommodation.  We need to be able to stay in Tasmania for four weeks in wheelchair-accessible venues.  Hotels are generally out, as we would need 2 or 3 rooms and that makes the trip unaffordable.  Via a Google search, I found a site that lists accessible short-stay accommodation throughout Tasmania.  It looks like we will be able to rent a cottage near Devonport for 2 weeks, then one on the east coast for a week, and a third cottage for the final week near Hobart.  The only fly in the ointment is that I'll need to book soon to ensure our place, and there are a lot of bills due at the moment.  Hooray for overtime!

The other bit that needs organising is respite care for Anita during the week that Laura, Claire and I want to walk the Overland Track.  She needs assistance with her activities of daily living for 6 days, and it looks hopeful that the Carer Respite Centre will be able to help with this.  It will be either residential respite care in a facility in or near Devonport, or it may be respite care provided in our rented cottage for the week.

Having a disabled spouse makes holiday planning essential.  We used to just pack up the camping gear and head off on holidays.  Now it takes a lot more organising, and is considerably more expensive.  Still, I'm grateful that we can still have family holidays.  It won't be too long before Laura heads off to university, then family holidays for all of us together will probably become a thing of the past.

A wheelchair-accessible vehicle for our family

Well, I'd better write a few lines before I start getting obituaries!!  It's been a busy couple of months recently.
Laura and I flew to Melbourne in early February to pick up a Ford Transit van with a wheelchair lifter.  This vehicle makes it much easier to move Anita about - even 6-year-old Erin can load Mum into the van and connect her chair to the tie-downs.  The lifter is a hydraulic Tieman unit, and can easily cope with the 150kg weight of Anita and electric power chair.  The tie-down system is a great concept by Qstraint, using self-retracting straps like a normal seat belt.  You just hold down a red button and pull out the strap, then hook the end to a secure point on the chair (in our case the seat anchors).  This is done on all 4 corners, then the straps automatically ratchet up tight.  So simple!

Wheelchair Lifter

2001 Ford Transit

All we need now is for Laura to get her P-plates, then Anita won't be dependent on me having time to drive her around.

A bit of concrete

Today's project was to improve the accessibility of our yard for Anita's electric wheelchair.  A few weeks ago, I concreted a slab across under the gates to stop the dogs wriggling under the gates and getting onto the street.  This made it impossible for Anita to get out with her chair unless I was around to assist, so I made a couple of ramps.  Unfortunately, they were too short and steep due to not having enough concrete left over.  So today I had the extra concrete premix to complete the job.

The idea is to reduce the angle so that the wheelchair can safely cross the gateway.  As the chair reaches the top of the up ramp, it acts a bit like a bulldozer as it tips onto the down ramp.  This is because of the type of chair it is (see the picture)

The angle of the two ramps meeting at the top of the beam under the gate needs to be gentle enough so Anita doesn't get thrown out of her chair as she goes over the crest.  I think I have it now, with each ramp being a metre long to traverse a step 100mm high.  By making the ramps long enough, Anita will now be able to inch her way over, where before with the shorter ramps she had to keep up her momentum.  She said it was just a bit too exciting before as she had to hang on for dear life as the chair lurched over the summit and tried to launch her into the gravel.

If it was our own house, we'd concrete or pave the whole driveway and be done with it.  However, spending that sort of money on a rented house is silly, and while the landlord makes noises about paving the driveway, we'll be long gone before it happens!

Inside the house is pretty wheelchair friendly.  It's just getting into the yard, and then the house that's a bit tricky.  However, with the right ramps in strategic locations, we should be able to manage OK.