Life Uncut - "I threw my leg at him and it hit him like a shish kebab" - Uncut with Ellie Cole

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Happy Mardi Gras lifers!  We spent the last 4 days attached at the hip on a trip to the Northern Territory together! Are we sick of each other? Absolutely not. Do we have a lot to unpack about our new found closeness, yes. Yes we do. On today's episode we unpack just how good of a dad Matty J is, according to the media and why are the standards so different for mothers and fathers?!Then we are joined by the wonderful Ellie Cole! Ellie is Australia's most decorated female paralympian. She's also a laugh and a half. Ellie had her leg amputated when she was 3 after battling a rare form of cancer. With just one leg she has (literally) been making waves and has played a huge part in shifting the public’s awareness of what living with a disability is like.In this chat we talk about our expectations of success and whether it brings true happiness, the toll her cancer and then living with a disability took on her family and Ellie not wanting to have to define her sexuality.You can find Ellie here: https://www.instagram.com/elliecoleswim/?hl=en Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura. And we have an absolutely crack episode. Today we are speaking to Ellie Cole.

If you don't know who Ellie Cole is, she is the most decorated female Paralympian in Australia of all time. Do you know what I loved about this? It's the fact that she was freaking hilarious. She's so funny. She took her leg off and threw it at a kid at school. I mean, we're going to give you context to that later. Let's not just make that the headline. But she's an absolute firecracker.

She's unstoppable. There was so much in this chat. We talked about her childhood cancer. We talked about what it was like growing up as an amputee, but also we get into, and I mean, in the spirit of Mardi Gras, we talk about how she came to discovering and understanding her own sexuality. Now, there is something else that I wanted to cover on this episode, and it is the fact that according to the news cycle, Maddie J is a doting dad.

And let me tell you, the bar is fucking low, people. And of course, we're going to tell you all about our trip to the Northern Territory. So let's get into it. Happy Mardi Gras weekend. Which we missed the whole thing. Yeah, we were sitting there blow by blow on social media though. Everyone I knew was there. My whole Instagram for the last three days was Mardi Gras.

It looked so unbelievably sensational. But also I feel like it's getting bigger and bigger and I don't want to say more inclusive because I feel like that's an obvious statement, but just I feel like everybody in Sydney is now getting involved and every year it's just growing in its size and capacity. It's amazing to see. It also didn't help that Ed Sheeran was here, Carly Minogue was here, there were concerts everywhere. I feel like everyone – and we were in the desert, which was amazing,

but like there was no concert out in the desert. But my whole Instagram was like one camel from you guys, from the Northern Territory, camel. And then Sydney. And then Mardi Gras, Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Sydney. I know. What a time for us to leave. Like Sydney normally sucks.

Nothing ever happens here. They never do. I like Sydney. No, in comparison to Melbourne, there's always cool stuff going on in Melbourne. But Sydney, it's like Sydney is so pretty it doesn't have to try hard. There's never anything to do. There's never anything going on. I mean, I disagree with what you're saying.

Okay, well, yeah, have kids and never leave the house. Yes. The one weekend where there is literally everything going on. We would have been at Mardi Gras in a heartbeat and I wish we had been there. But unfortunately, we were in the desert. However. Not unfortunately. I know, I was going to say it was amazing, but it's just, it's sad that it coincided.

It was just of all weekends. That was the thing of all weekends. But I felt like I was there because I was so immersive. My Instagram was like so immersive. Put the surround sound on and close your eyes and you were there. All right, we'll tell you about our trip to Northern Territory because it was absolutely phenomenal. You are looking a little bit tired today, I must admit.

You're looking how I feel, I think. Thank you for telling me I look like shit. I didn't say that. That's what that means though, right? When someone's like, hey, you look tired, it's literally just someone saying like you don't look good. It's like when I came back from living overseas when I was younger. I lived over there for a couple of years.

Flex. When I came back, my mum was like, oh, you look healthy. It's that same thing, you know? Yeah, my mum once said you look pregnant, which meant something else. Were you pregnant or? I was 19 and had found the unibar. That was about it.

But anyway. What did they used to call it? So stupid. The Heathrow injection. Remember when you were a teenager, that's what they used to call it. All the Aussies that went over to do their gap years in Heathrow came back like stacked on the kilos because you used to go over there and all you would do for years is like drink, party, eat chips,

eat sausage rolls. They called it the Heathrow injection. It's a real thing. Fucking let a person live. 100%. Let a 19-, 20-year-old live their best life at the unibar eating pies and that's exactly what I was doing. Anyway, we did get back last night from the Northern Territory.

I came back to gastro. Woo! You or the kid? Lola. Oh. Yeah. Lola. The Lola has been at gastro.

But does that not mean that everyone's going to have it? Is there such thing as one person in a family getting gastro? Because I don't think there is. Let's find out. So were there any axe explosions this morning or? No, nobody else. Yeah. Sometimes it's touch and go.

Sometimes just one soldier will fall and other times it wipes out the whole army. Yeah. Really? Oh my God. Okay. Speaking of, this is funny. Let's not talk about gastro. Okay.

That's where I was going. Let's talk about the Northern Territory. So we, I mean, for me, it was a bucket list. Uluru has been on my bucket list for a very long time I do definitely want to go back we're only there for a couple of days I want to go back and do the whole top end that would be incredible because that whole area has been on my list but we did get to tick off a bucket list which was Uluru it was just as special and incredible as I had imagined because at the end of the day you're like okay it's this really big rock in the desert but everybody talks about the feelings you get

when you see it my dad had been like oh you wait till you come across it you come over the hill and you see it and the feelings it brings up. And I was like, okay, how can a rock, seen as though I'm not a, what's the rock man? Geologist? Yeah. Charades? Charades.

You know, two words, syllable, second word sounds like. I'm not a geologist. So I was like, how much emotion can a rock incite? Well, let me tell you. Isn't it beautiful? It is beautiful. When I got home, I said to Matt, you know what? When we're in our late 60s, we're going to buy a camper van

and we're going to just drive out there. That's what we're going to do. Would you take the kids out there? Nah, not at this age. I think it's probably a bit tricky. not just that it was very hot so I think a bit tricky for a three-year-old and two-year-old first day was 38 yeah it was warm and also hikes like unless we were going to strap the kids on and hike up a hill I don't think that that's like suitable I reckon when your kids are about like

you know 12 13 14 you could definitely take them but I think any younger than that's probably a little bit too young just for them to fully appreciate it more than anything but I think my favorite everyone talks about Uluru and how beautiful Uluru is going to be and it is so I guess I had high expectations for it. I think I expected to be wowed by seeing it for the first time. But for me, it was Katajuda. I had not, and I remember learning about it when I was in primary school. It used to be called the Olgas for anyone who is not familiar with the name Katajuda. But for me, that was just freaking unbelievably incredible. And you're just in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing around. There's a couple of little shrubs, like red dust. And then out of

nowhere are these incredible formations. It's just truly unbelievable. My favorite part was we got up at what time, 5 a.m., 4.30? Oh, mate, it was a lot of early mornings. We got up very early to do a camel ride through the desert and you sort of come up over this hill as the sun is rising. It's perfect timing. You're coming up over this hill, the sun is rising, and then as you just come up to the precipice,

you look out and you see Uluru with the sun rising and it was just a spectacular moment. You don't hear anything else because there's nothing else out there. The only thing you hear is Brittany complaining about the jam. Oh, my God. Guys. So Keisha was behind me on the biggest camel in Australia apparently, the tallest camel.

I think Keisha's the smallest one in Australia so she got the biggest camel. We had the most slobbery camel and we all know Keisha likes a tall boy so she got the biggest camel in Australia. We say that because Keisha's ex is like 6'6 or something. Anyway. 6'11. She corrected us. Keisha liked the big boy.

Ben's 6'5 and that's enormous. So 6'11 is enormous. Anyway, our camel slobbered so much he had a problem. So he had to wear a mouth guard, like a mouthpiece that caught the slobber. No, he had to wear a mouthpiece because he also had the Heathrow injection. The reason why he had a mouthpiece on, I thought, oh, we've gotten the aggressive camel, we've gotten the camel the bites. No.

Oh, no, we don't. The reason why we had the camel with the mouth bag over is because he would stop at every bush on the way and eat them. So they had to, like, put a thing over his face so he didn't just eat everything on the walk. Yeah, he's a hungry hippo. He would stop and what happens is all camels are linked in a line. So when he wanted to go and eat something, he would bend down to eat it

and then all the other camels would go rogue and eat them. So he had a mouthpiece on. The camel that Keisha was on, now Keisha was behind me directly. Call him by his name. His name was Rocky. I'm about to introduce him. He's the tallest camel in Australia. He deserves his own introduction, though.

His name is Rocky. Now when we all got onto our camels, the guide, this really lovely girl, i think it was tia said to us oh rocky is a bit playful he might get very close to you he's the only camel that likes to be really close to the person in front everyone else stays in their line and i was like cute love camels they're so pretty grab yourself on me rocky yeah and then before we even started i turned around to bond with the camel because i i figured that's what you do you know i'm a dog person i think as a camper so i tried to bond with rocky and i went out to touch his nose because you're allowed to do that you pat them and stuff and he headbutted me really

quickly. Now we hadn't taken off. He smashed his head, like tried to push me. Right. And I was like, Rocky, you little turd burger. I was like, calm down. Let's just be friends. Then he let me pat him. We're walking along. He was sort of scratching his nose on my leg and stuff like that. And then about halfway through, out of nowhere, he just bit me. He lunged forward and he put his whole mouth around my arm and bit my arm. So I like do this little squeal. Obviously my arms, like I'm fine but he was going in for a nibble because he probably couldn't get to a bush he bit my arm and i jump and i start to like a bit hyperventilate and i have these tears in my eyes and then laura just loses it laura's hysterics keisha's in hysterics i'm having a panic attack because

i've been bitten by the tallest camel in australia rocky and no one believed me you're all gaslighting me you still think i'm making it up it's not a mark there's no marks there's no there was a mark on my shirt it was just a slobber on your shirt she took a photo brit brit had been like he keeps biting me he keeps biting me and then i turn around and we are dying with laughter hysterical brit started crying and then we all felt so bad i started crying you're in an abusive relationship that is gaslighting with us i told you something happened to me he laughed at my face and said it didn't and i'm trauma and then i went home and i had a nightmare about camel anyway brit had a heat stroke and just kept dreaming about camels the whole time i think it was so hot my dreams

were wild anyway i'm not gonna lose an arm everything's okay he got in trouble anyway from the guide tia she came up and roused on him it was actually funny she was talking to him like a child she came and pulled his nose really close to her like held it in her hands and she's like rocky we know we don't do that we don't we don't buy people okay and it's like he knew he like put his head down he was like sorry kind of thing and to be fair he didn't bite you again for the rest of the time he didn't know he was great yeah i was pretty anxious though every time he moved his head towards me i was like apparently that they have an iq of like a 12 year old kid like they're so the camels are so unbelievably smart yeah and they were like so loved in this enclosure that

they were in the gates are so low that they could literally step out of them and step over them if they wanted to leave yeah they can leave and come back but they're just like being around tia because she's a rock star well what i didn't know is too we're just doing camel talk here which is so funny but tia our guide she has had camels she has a pet camel like a dog she got a camel when she was 11 or 12 and she's – I think it was Lincoln. She's taken it with her everywhere. Like, you know when you move, you take your dog or your cat. She took a camel.

She takes a camel. So she still has him because camels can live to like 50 years. 50 years and 30 years in the wild. And you really can bond with them. They are very intelligent. They understand everything. They have emotions. They get sad when their owner goes.

So they're like family to the people out there that look after them. So it was really special to see that. Do you know what one of my highlights was? It was finding – I know what you're going to say. What? No, I don't. nah you know what it was actually it wasn't my highlight but I have a couple of things to say

I know here we go firstly it was finding the hire car keys after losing them for two hours in the desert oh hang on we were in Kings Canyon it is beautiful like I'm talking the most breathtaking views that you're ever going to see gorgeous hikes but literally the middle of nowhere it's the middle of desert yeah and we were glamping certainly not camping and just at this moment where I was like where the fuck are the keys and the keys were not where I thought the keys were Now, can I say first, when Laura got out of the car, I said somebody should take the keys from Laura because she loses everything. Laura historically drops bank cards, wallets, keys, anything of importance,

just falls out. You do it all the time. You even do it at radio. You drop your swipe. Everywhere you go, you drop something, but you have no idea and you keep walking. I am like clinically chaotic. Like it's an ongoing joke that I probably. Clinically, it's diagnosed.

Yeah, like well, it's undiagnosed. She's like, I am the most chaotically forgetful, like my brain is in two places at the one time person that you will ever meet, that you would go, wow, she has her shit together for someone who is absolutely so useless. So I made a point, give us the keys. And she's like, ah, it's fine. Off she walks into the place.

We get ready to go. We wanted to go and drive to one of the hikes a bit later on. And she's like, hey, guys, who took the keys? And I'm like, well, no one took them. You had them. She goes, no, I definitely didn't. And I'm like, you definitely did. She's like, I'm pretty sure I put them in your room, Brittany.

Remember, you put them on your table. And I'm like, don't you? No, I said I put them in my table. I couldn't remember where they'd gone. So we start searching. High and low. Everywhere. Everywhere.

The gravel. For these keys. The fire pit. Three hours. We were like, we are stuck in the desert. We cannot, there's no reception there. We couldn't call for help. It's also three and a half hours away from where we got the hire car

and we needed to be back to the airport the next morning. So I was like, this is truly quite the pickle. if these don't show up but anyway like problem solved we found them they had fallen down in between pocket they had they had fallen into a hole between the car seats like down into this crevice and it was only just that a part of me was like wonder what's in that hole jammed my hand down there and there they were the keys it was it was like something it was like a divine being was like laura stick your hand in that hole and figure out what's in there i think it was the last place we didn't look you were like oh well it was worth a shot the last thing i want to say about our trip

because truly it was magical if you've been thinking about going to Northern Territory, go. But it's brought us closer, significantly closer. And when just when you thought you couldn't get any closer? Brittany, Keisha and myself are now as close as can humanly be and one of those things means that we've achieved a whole new level in our friendship. We are now friends who fart in front of each other

and that is a very big step. And that was not my doing, surprising to everybody. Keisha was dropping bombs. It was Brittany Hockley-Hugh who intentionally crop dusted me and then fucking laughed about it. I was in my bedroom. You were not. Brittany was sleeping.

Yes, I was in my own bedroom. Britt was sleeping in the lounge room because that's where the fold-out bed was and she was walking into the kitchen and farts as I'm coming up the stairs and then laughs in my face about it and then tries to gaslight me, palm it off as though she just did a cute fart in her bedroom but no she looked me dead in the eyes farted then laughed and that's where our friendship is now okay we all know this we all know there's two sides to a story Keisha what side's correct okay she's pointing at me okay let's ask this question Laura did you have a bedroom oh yeah you did Keisha did you have a bedroom yes Brittany's

bedroom was don't complain you picked it I had the bed that flaps down from the wall it was a very comfortable bed but it did mean that my bedroom became the lounge room and the lounge became my bedroom. I was the lounge room. You do not own the hallway and the kitchen. Every single exit entrance, other room that's connected to the lounge room is not yours. You farted in the hallway and walked it into the kitchen. On a technicality, I was in the thoroughfare leaving my bedroom. I had not yet accessed the connecting room, meaning I was still in my bedroom when you came hot on my tail, just as I needed some reprieve, meaning you walked into it. So I didn't do it to you.

No. You knew I was behind you. Fuck off. You could have stopped your trajectory at any time. Shut up. It's not even true. Stop being so defensive about the fact that we're now friends who fart in front. It's beautiful.

It's not a new thing. You've been doing it for years. It's beautiful. We're finally at that phase. It's taken us four years to get to a place where we feel comfortable, where you are so comfortable around me that you will fart and then laugh in my face. I'll admit it was funny though. We all were.

It was funny. Disgusting. Because it was cute. Disgusting. You're making it sound bad. It was like beep. Ha ha ha. It was cute.

You know what else is cute? A little article that was published over the weekend whilst I was away abandoning my children. Oh, you're so irresponsible. Yeah, my three-year-old. Going away on a holiday with your friends for a couple of days. How dare I? How dare I?

And I'm a sacrificial mother. How dare I have any time to myself? No, but there was an article. It said this. The Bachelor's Maddie Johnson is every inch the doting father as he enjoys a girl's day out with daughters Marlee Mae, 3, and Lola Ellis, 1. Well, we all know she's two.

So that's where the first problem starts. I read this. Actually, do you know what? You screenshot it first, Britt, and sent it to me. And you did it because you knew how riled up it would make me. I didn't actually really say anything. I just sort of sent it and was like, lol, because I didn't know if you'd laugh or if you'd be mad.

But I knew that it was going to incite some sort of feeling. I don't even know what feeling it incited. Because like, firstly, Matt is a freaking great dad. He is a doting father. He is a doting father. There is no debate about that. that is accurate journalism yeah 100 that's the most accurate part of this entire article is it newsworthy that matt is a father who is proactively being a father like why is this an

article and it made me get so riled up because i was like you will never ever ever see an article published anywhere not daily mail not even like one of the women's magazines nothing laura burn takes kids to park laura burn doting mother no because i'm expected to be a mother because i'm a mother and that's my job but a father it's an opt-in situation you don't have to be a doting father you can just be there and be a shit one and that's okay because the bar is low the thing that gets me well okay this is why i think it is it's because there's something about seeing a dad strapped with a kid to their chest walking around getting a coffee in the morning doing the little groceries or whatever as soon as we see a man with a child we just think they've gone the extra mile

We think it's so cute. We think they're dilfs. We're attracted to it. It gets hormones going in women. It's this really big deal because historically speaking, the man went to work all day and was never with a kid and the mother was the housewife and raised the children. That's what our roles were since the dawn of day.

It's a role reversal now. It has been for a long time, not just you but just in society. It's not like that anymore. People are creating their own ideas of how a family works. for you and Maddie J you're both working parents you both take times one of you goes to work one of you look at our kids the other one does the same sometimes they're in daycare it's always different but we still have this obsession with oh my god this man's going above and beyond because he strapped the kid to him and he's gone out for the day it's like it's still not a normal thing

it's like we look at it like it is not an everyday occurrence but it is I mean the wild thing to me is sentences like and I'm guilty of it I do it sometimes too he's a hands-on dad you say it all the time you would never say you're a hands-on mum like no that's what a mum is because that's the expectation right and it just goes to reiterate how low the bar is for dads like and I'm not saying this is in the case of the expectation we hold for our own partners or for our own fathers in our relationships I'm talking about in terms of media in terms of the public perception and social outlook on the role of dads the bar is low a dad who takes their kids to the park so Matt just so for context of what matt did this day he got up in the morning i wasn't home obviously i was in

northern territory abandoning my children he got up in the day he got the kids you know got them breakfast he took them to a little play center where marley got to dress up in princess dresses then he took them home he put lola to bed for her nap he gave marley lunch lola woke up she got lunch and then they went to the park and rode their bikes around the park it is truly so non-eventful It is something that mothers would do every single week if they're a stay-at-home mum or if you're a mum who sees your kids on the weekend because you're a working mum, it's something you would do every week. It's such a non-event.

But there is a news article because it is so newsworthy that a father would possibly spend that time with their children. It also wasn't just a news article. I opened the news. It was the head. It was the big one. It was the big, bold one. The first thing I saw, I was so excited.

I was sweating my pants. I was crop dusting everywhere. I was like, I need to tell Laura this news article. laser. Brittany's squirting because she's so excited because I was excited about what I was going to do to you. The reason why I feel so frustrated about it. I mean, of course there's a little part of me that's like, oh, that's nice. That's nice for Matt. It's nice that he gets the validation that I won't give him for being a decent dad. But it's like when the media writes articles like this, because for most people you would see it, you would flick past it, right? You

don't actually register how outrageously misogynistic the difference is between the standard to which dads are held and the standard to which moms are held. But it's the subliminal messaging in that. Well, it's not even what I'm saying by subliminal. I mean, you flick past it and you don't really register how fucked that is until somebody sits here and goes, what the hell is this article? And then that just reinforces this expectation that we have on mothers and on dads. And I guess like the only articles that you really ever see about moms are how they're doing it wrong and that's what makes me so upset you know you see for dads oh look they took their kids to the park that's a news article and for a mum it's always what they didn't do well enough

or some way of shaming them for something that hasn't stood up to the expectations of society whether it be how they've been either neglectful because they've taken time out for themselves we've seen it with ashy binds going away for a couple of days we've seen it with rebel wilson being mum shamed in her first couple of weeks of having children she said in two days i've been a first time mom. But then we've also seen it in the last couple of weeks with people like Lee Sales, Carrie Bickmore and Jackie O. There was an article that was published a couple of weeks ago saying the reason why their relationships had fallen apart was because they were career orientated women. And then the other type of article that we see about moms, oh, just

it just makes my blood boil. Well, the other type of article that we often see is things like what we see of Phoebe Burgess when she's taking her kids to school or she's taking them to the park, instead of it being about the fact that she's doing something for her children it's always about what she's wearing and how much money she's spent on her clothes and this is and I know we talk about it all the time but it just goes to show and I can't reiterate this enough how unbelievably misogynistic our media is that all a man has to do is take their kids to the park and think about how high the bar is for mums but it's wild it's wild to say that a woman cannot have a family and a career and a relationship successfully.

Yeah. And it makes, I think that point makes me feel personally really infuriated because obviously like I have two very small children and I am extremely career driven. You know, I run two businesses and I work my fucking ass off. Like I really do. But the other thing that I think people forget to talk about is when you have a partner who is equal share in that team, who do 50% of the parenting. Sometimes Matt does 60%. I do 40% of the parenting. Sometimes I do 60%. He does 40% of the parenting. But when you have someone who shows up equally, it is incredible how much additional time you have to still pursue careers and be a mom at the same time. But usually, and more often than not, it's the mom who is the one who has to make 90% of the sacrifices in that

relationship. And I guess like the more I thought about that article, the fucking more angry it made me because of how much it puts this disparity between the expectations on mums and the expectations on dads and that's it and we can have a laugh and laugh we did oh laugh we did and so did matt so matt was like look laura just let it be he's like i'm a great dad and that is obviously newsworthy and it's the headline in bold underlined at the front page anyway and it was written by a woman was it i didn't even look at that i don't want to like shame the journalist because like you guys can all go and see but it blows my fucking mind that a female can write an article like that and not see how deeply problematic it is. All right, enough of that. Let's do an

accidentally unfiltered. Now, this is something without doubt that I would do. I'm moving overseas shortly. I was signing up to an online bank so I can have foreign currencies while I'm traveling. I'm sitting at home. It is really hot. So naturally, I'm not wearing any clothes. I'm butt naked on my lounge. So I'm setting all this banking up on my phone and the app wants me to I deemed myself against my passport. It came up with like one of those oval things where you have to put your face and it scans it. And the rest of the screen was just blacked out.

I put my face in the oval, took the photo. Knowing it was just my face, it fit perfectly. I was sure of it. I've hit the upload button only to get a brief glimpse of the photo as it's uploading. And let me tell you, it was not just the oval of my face. It was me standing there, face, titties and all. So someone had a wonderful Monday receiving unsolicited nude from me

in a standard bank account application. I was mortified and haven't stopped laughing since. I was approved straight away. You know what she means, hey? Like when you have that little oval. But you think that just that's what it's taking. But obviously the blacked out screen was like background. The oval is just to size your head.

It's not because nothing else makes it. It's just so that the head size is standardised. I would have thought the same thing. I would have just... They're not just going to send a little oval of a face. Yeah, that's what I would have done as well. But I probably wouldn't have risked it naked anyway. I probably would have at least put like some nipple tassels on.

Oh, fuck. That's so good. Ellie Cole. Where do we begin? The very start. Ellie is the most successful Australian female Paralympian ever. with 17 medals. Ellie had her leg amputated at the age of three after battling a rare form of cancer. With just one leg, she has literally been making waves and had played a huge part

in shifting the public's awareness of what living with a disability is like. Ellie, welcome to Life Uncut. Can I just say we have never had a guest come in and nothing against our guests. We love you all. We've never had a guest come and bring us breakfast. Ellie walked with a handful of goodies of all sorts. We've got croissants, we've got baked goods. Also, I really like that you said that your superpower is trying to figure out people's favourite breakfast snack and you did very well.

Like, croissant nailed it. 100% hit rate. Ellie, we start every episode with... Accidentally unfiltered, we want you to throw yourself under a bus. Not literally. Metaphorically and tell us your most embarrassing story. Most embarrassing. I feel like embarrassing is quite subjective, but I have two

I thought you guys could choose. Oh, we both, yeah. Yeah, go for it. Well, I think I'll just tell one, but you can either choose between the time that I stopped 50 metres short at a world championships when I was winning the race. Or. I feel like that one's self-explanatory.

Did you just forget how many laps there were? I mean, you were like, I'm done now. Yeah, but it's also like the way you feel. You've got to describe the feelings and everything. Okay, what's option two? Has it got to do with poop? No. They always do, though.

Yeah, no, definitely just asking for a friend. Have you shit yourself in public or something? Well, Rebel Wilson did. No, everyone has a poop story. Yeah. I don't think I have a poop story. Okay, that's okay. I did shit myself in a maze though when I was like five.

She's like, I can't get out. So you do have a poop story. No, what's the other option? So the other option is when my leg fell off in public. Oh, that one. I want that one. So amazing. Actually, to be honest, I want them both.

Can we be greedy? Okay, I suppose you can be greedy. So the first one was, I was actually at a world short course swimming championships. It was in Rio de Janeiro, a beautiful place to swim, but I was swimming the 400 meters freestyle in short course laps. So 25 meter pool. So can you guess how many laps? Eight.

No, 24. Well, that's not my strong point. There's four laps in a hundred meters. Now what's that times four? Well, it's 16 laps. Well, this is now our embarrassing moment. Well, if you're swimming in a long course pool, a 50 metre pool, and you're swimming 16 laps, you have like a counter at the end of the pool. But for some reason in short course,

they don't give you that. They don't give you a whistle or anything. And so I thought that I was at 16 laps. So I was like gunning it to the finish line. And then I was winning ahead of world record pace and everything. I touched the wall. I did a small little fist. I was so gassed that my arm was like a soggy noodle more than anything and was everyone like what are you doing well then some lady was screaming at me in portuguese and i didn't know what she was saying i didn't do portuguese enjoy lingo and then all of my competitors did a tumble turn and that's when i was like fuck like and not only that i had absolutely gassed myself like i'd given it my you got nothing left and then i had to do another 50 meters and oh it wasn't even of course because

you were at the wrong end of like you'd be at the wrong end of the pool if it was 25 short so 50 meters to go so yeah two extra laps of a 25 meter pool and I ended up coming third you still got a medal that's pretty good but the great thing because I was ahead of world record pace at the 200 meter mark I still broke the 200 meter world record so I still kind of got a world record out of it how do you like stand there on the third podium and look at them be like yeah guys that was embarrassing the worst part is the fist pump if you hadn't fist pumped it'd be almost okay but it was like the oh yeah is there it wasn't an oh yeah I honestly had like a soggy arm so you were like flapping it around is there footage of this somewhere no and if there was I would still say

no that's such a shame and I feel like you're lying but we might find it and see if we can put it on the social what's the second accidentally unfilled word the leg fell well this one's a bit more difficult to explain but the way that a prosthetic stays on is you kind of like roll a silicon liner onto whatever's left of your arm or your leg and it has this pin at the end and the pin goes into your prosthetic and like your prosthetic kind of grabs onto the pin so like that's how your leg suspends from your body I was walking with like five shopping bags and the pin hadn't been like glued into the liner so the pin had come like an attachment and there's a I'm walking along with like just some grocery shopping in Canberra of all places

and I think the same thing would happen whether you're able-bodied or disabled like if you're walking left right left right you would expect your leg to be there by the time you put your foot down but I heard this like clonk and I couldn't do anything because I was holding shopping bags and so what you you tumbled well no I kind of did this like stumbly thing but caught my ballots but then like a pogo stick I didn't know what to do because yeah I was like holding these shopping bags and everybody just felt awkward and did people run to help or are They're just like, oh, I don't know whether I do help. Because sometimes people can be awkward around any type of disability.

And so then they're like, fuck, do I help? I mean, if someone doesn't run to help when a leg's fallen off, there's questions to be asked. But what I mean by that is like, oh, I don't want to make it embarrassing for you so, like, do I run up and, oh, or how do people react? Well, wouldn't it be so much worse if you just left, like, a girl to tell you that it's so much worse? So you probably would go through those feelings and then you'd be like,

okay, you've got to go help her. with all your shopping bags but then it's awkward because you're just like can you just like pick my leg up and give it do you mind passing me my leg we're gonna ask you Ellie a lot of questions but we're gonna ask them for people that probably just haven't thought about these things so the question that popped into my head then is when you're walking and you're saying you're expecting the next let your leg to go and hit the ground do you still have a lot of feeling I don't know if we can call it your stump is that what we're yep do you have feeling still so you actually felt it detach or did you just hear that it detached I definitely knew it wasn't there because like a

prosthetic is quite heavy and so when it's not attached to your body anymore you feel this like lightness freedom I'm either dying or my leg is falling off I'm levitating so with having a prosthetic leg you say it's heavy and also you just have a silicon like sock that goes over it surely it's not particularly comfortable very functional but is that something that's like a comfortable thing to wear? It's not at all. So the top part is made of fiberglass and it's quite sharp around the edges. So if you do a lot of walking and like you just have that friction of the fiberglass against your skin, it can create some like cuts or abrasions. And then once you have a cut there, it's game over basically. And you could spend up to like five

days not being able to walk or having to use like crutches or a chair or something. And I find like the older I'm getting, the worse it's becoming because my skin's becoming really weak around that area almost like a pressure type sore is it yeah but sure like how is that the best solution like why is it sharp around the edges well you can so there's a trade-off so you can have like silicon around the edges but then that makes the socket quite thick so if you're wearing pants like nice functional yeah right right yeah it changes the shape of it you've either got to choose between functionality or vanity basically with everything in life I mean you were three years old when you had your leg amputated and that was because you had childhood cancer what type of cancer did you

have? So it was a very rare cancer, a neurosarcoma. So it was a cancer in the nerve that ran down the back of my leg. And I've never met anybody else that's had nerve cancer like mine. It's quite rare. You feel like being like, come on universe, like what are the odds of giving me a nerve cancer? So rare. I think it's like one in 10 million or something to have a nerve cancer. But yeah, like I don't remember any of it. So how did your parents discover it or figure out that something was really wrong because you had only been two years old at the time a good question that I've never asked and two I didn't know I have I have asked the questions I've actually asked a lot of questions as I've become older and a bit more aware of my parents feelings as well

which happens with age so I have a twin sister so my parents did have somebody to compare great name you know yeah her name's Brittany oh my god that's such a great name yeah there were just a few signs when I was little so my walking was quite delayed. I was like scooting around on my bottom while my sister was like running around. I would wake up a lot during the night which a lot of kids do but like I was waking up and screaming and so my parents just assumed that after I was diagnosed that maybe that could have been pins and needles or like quite severe nerve pain and then my leg was growing at a different rate which they didn't notice until I was around about two. So like one was, you mean it was the one with the nerve damage was growing slowly? Yes. Because

the cancer tumor was like wrapped around the blood supply as well. So that leg wasn't getting as much blood, like enough to stay alive. Do you remember ever having both legs or were you too young? I was too young. I remember like being in the rehab ward and learning how to walk and everything. And I remember there was this giant like teddy bear in the rehab ward. And when I went back a few years ago, like it's not even that big, the teddy bear, you know, those memories that you have when you're younger and how you perceive the world when you're so little I know but like I've been back to the oncology ward and it's a hard place to be for me like you don't see kids very often that are so sick but it's interesting like although my mind doesn't remember my body

remembers so like if I go into an MRI machine now I get a full adrenaline rush like I actually have to like meditate when I'm inside an MRI machine just to get through it sometimes like even being under like fluorescent lights will like be a trigger. It's like a bit of PTSD, I suppose, because I spent like a year and a half in hospital and it was not a good time. Like I was being pumped full of chemo and testing and everything. And as a little kid too, you don't have the level of comprehension that you would have as an adult. Do you remember understanding what was happening and that you were going to be different? Like I didn't understand that I was going to be different in terms of like trying to explain to a young girl, firstly, why she's sick was really hard

on my parents for obvious reasons and when I went into the surgery to have my leg amputated they said that I had a naughty sore and it needed to be taken away like that's the only way they could explain it to a three-year-old which is true which is true but then my twin sister when I came out of theater was like when am I going in oh that's so sweet I was like girl you got to keep your legs but also like so hard especially when you grow up I can't even imagine with a twin and everything you've done until that time is the same she would be like hey why did she get that and I didn't I mean, my kids fight over everything. You know what? My siblings are still bitching that I get disability park. You're like, and my leg costs a lot of money. So take that. Exactly. You might

not remember a lot from that time, but I'm sure your parents remember everything from that time. I saw a video yesterday and it was you in a pram and it must've been shortly after you having your leg amputated and you looked like you were, I mean, you looked really distressed in this very short clip of the video as a three-year-old. And I think in that second, I was watching it and I saw my little three-year-old and I was in tears and I was like I can't even imagine what that would have been like for your mum you know this feeling of what's going to happen you know how's my how's my child going to fit in this it's not just what you're going through in that initial moment of having a leg amputated but it's like thinking about all the rest of your life and how

that's going to pan out for you has your mum spoken much to you about what that period was like for her I like I said before I've asked I've begun to ask questions it's still a very difficult topic for her to discuss even like 25 years later. For example, just at Christmas time, I mentioned my oncology nurse, Paula. I mentioned her name to my mom because she had reached out when I was doing a radio show of all things. And as soon as I just mentioned the word Paula, I looked at mom across the table and she was in tears. And I was like, mom, like, get over it. I'm doing great, mom. No mother or parent wants to look at their child in pain. And I imagine like you said,

you have this visceral trauma of remembering like an MRI machine and the lights set you off I'm sure it's the same for your mom I'm sure like when she thinks of these memories again it takes her back to that exact place and it's probably something a lot of people don't think about that it's not just you that's being affected although it I mean directly it is but your whole family has to deal with that. Yeah and I see that almost every day like my whole family has been affected in one way or another like my older sister has a lot of nightmares still that I keep getting my cancer back and like it's been 25 years my mom like you can't even mention the word cancer to her or like show her any photos or videos from that time like I think having my leg amputated I think she was

nervous more like she wasn't nervous that I was going to have a disability or anything I think that day actually like signified the end of a year and a half of hell for my family but I don't think that anybody thought that the ongoing effects of what trauma can do to you you know even 25 years later and the effects that it can have on your family long term like no one thinks about the extended family of a cancer patient yeah I work with some cancer charities now and I occasionally visit my old oncology ward and I really feel for the families like the kids are usually okay but it's the families that you've really got to look out for what impact has it had on your family in terms of how many brothers and sisters do you have I have an older brother who also has a disability

and I have a twin sister, Brittany, and an older sister, Asha. So I can only imagine having three other kids and then you have one child who's in hospital all the time and you said your other brother has a disability as well, which would mean that there is extra care there. How, as a parent, do you evenly distribute the care? Or is it the person who needs it the most is the person that gets it in that moment?

Like it has brought our family really close together. So in terms of distributing care, like we all look out for each other. We always have and we always will. But, like, my sister Asha, she's one of my best friends, but she's always complaining about how she's the middle child. Without the disability. I know. She's like, you know, when you had cancer I got left at home

and then Dane got sick and I got left at home. Is your brother's name Dane? Yeah. My brother is Dane. Bullshit. Do you have a sister called Ellie? Sherry. Close.

Yeah, I have Dane and Brittany. Anyway, that's crazy. What is Dane's disability? He has Crohn's disease. So he was diagnosed when he was seven and now he has a colostomy bag. But he was very, very sick when I was little. That must have been a really full on time for your parents. It was.

And when we all left the coop and left home, mum decided that because she'd spent enough time in hospitals so that she was going to become a palliative care nurse. So after we left, is your mum a palliative care nurse? No, I just mean what a real life angel. Yeah, what an unbelievable person. She is really great. But yeah, she certainly wears her emotions on her sleeve and she's sometimes a bit embarrassed about that but I said like mum it's really great to feel things you know there's so many people

that go through life every single day that don't feel things and like you feel it to the fullest when you were a child and you were at school what was your reception like from your friends and other kids that saw you and realized you were different I was actually quite welcomed in primary school because I started primary school obviously like five or six so I didn't know any different and I don't think kids really knew any different either like they asked the questions and then once they realized okay she's got that thing going on like they kind of wanted to just play in the playground and so like all the people that I went to primary school with I grew up with and they were very accepting and then my first day of high school a few kids pointed out their

differences my differences and it resulted in me throwing my leg across the room what happened how did you rip your leg off and throw it at a kid you just do it so that you mean they were like bullying you a little bit well he tried to I was in I was in drama class yeah he just said to me like i didn't know they let pirates i didn't know they let pirates go to this school kids can suck hey that's pretty funny though i know it's funny now seven like it's it's a pretty random bullying comment but like also fuck you did you hit him with your leg well no so like yeah i think when we're dealt with a conflict there like you obviously go into your fight or flight response i never learned how to run so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna run in anywhere so like the only the

only response I really had was to fight so I just I don't know like it was kind of like eat shit and I threw my leg at him and it hit him like a shish kebab and it was funny because on my first day of school I remember thinking like I do not want anybody to notice like how different I am like you only want to fit in when you're 11 yeah and like by 9.05 in the morning I'd kind of like let the whole school knew that I was different by throwing my leg at a kid I suppose you could call that almost physical assault is it physical assault I think it is yeah it's not attached to you if it's not really physical I feel an appendage I think it's still your leg he's like she kicked me and you're like it wasn't attached on a technicality you mentioned about how being

in school all you wanted to do at the time was to fit in and so I can imagine part of fitting in would be covering your prosthetic leg so that you know to minimize people questioning or even looking but like you walked in today you're wearing a short skirt and your prosthetic leg is like loud and proud do you feel like there was a time in your life where that changed where you were like I don't feel like I need to hide this anymore this is a really cool thing that I have and I'm really proud of it yeah I think so probably when I did join the swim team so my first leg when I was at high school that I was wearing was like I think it was actually designed by the processes and my parents I didn't really have any input but it had like this fake skin on it and it was skin

colored like it was gross I kind of wanted to like we see a lot right yeah whereas now like my leg kind of looks a bit like a batman leg you can choose like what you want on the socket so like i used to have an australian flag when i was on the swim team but now i've got like classic carbon fiber you're really moving up in the world but yeah it's fun now like kind of a bit of a statement piece and like i said to you when i walked into the room i saw a guy with no legs at the paralympics and i was like damn i want that that's cool literally you sat down and you just said you said yeah this leg's really cool i wish i had two of them and i was like that would require you having no legs that you're actually born with and you're like yeah it's fine

I'm cool with that. Would you genuinely, do you think it would be easier for you to have two prosthetic legs? Is it hard to have one? Is that what you're saying? I don't know. Is it hard to have two legs? Like you just don't know until you go through it. And it's so amazing. I think like the thing that's really special about your story is you don't know any different, you know, like you've grown up your entire life with one leg and one prosthetic leg. And it's so a part of your identity. It's so a part of who you are that I feel that for people who maybe have to go through older where they know a different world they've also had to go through the trauma of re-identifying with who they are now that they have one leg and I guess that that would bring

a whole different set of emotional hurdles to overcome. Yeah you are right I think there's definitely two separate parts of you there like if you lost your leg or acquired a disability when you're older you certainly identify and remember all of these memories of what you could have done without your disability and you kind of have to learn and re-adapt how you do everything in your life whereas because I was young I had to learn and adapt from the age of three and also I grew up with a stigma around me that I wasn't going to ever achieve anything in my life and I'm a real like fuck you kind of person yeah and so you showed them when you stopped in that middle of that race you really showed them what's up but then you won 17 medals but what a powerful response

to that do you think that that's been a big driver especially in your success in swimming like the fact that you're like no I'm gonna prove everybody wrong yeah huge I always say to my spin sister that there is absolutely no way that I would have been an athlete if I had two legs no way you reckon no it's so hard it is so hard I was actually listening to a podcast your podcast the other day of Matt trying to swim 30 meters under the water oh he's obsessed I know but I'm like I would have done that but I would have preferred to have done that and then stopped and not swim for another two hours after. Yeah.

Okay, so how did you get into swimming? What age were you? Why did you do it? And when did the obsession – or when did you realise that you're like, holy shit, like I could be fucking good at this? Oh, that's a lot of questions. I know. That's the rest of the interview done.

I know. I started when I was three, so eight weeks after my leg amputation for rehab. And you'll find that a lot of like para swimmers actually kind of like born in a rehab pool. And I always think it might be a bit insensitive for me to like go to a rehab pool now and like try and pick them like can we have you on the team can we have you like a scout yeah no that's you can scout but it's also because swimming is so low impact right so it's done as part of recovery but for somebody who you know you were swimming against people

who would have had all their limbs at what point were you and did you realize well actually I could be a Paralympic swimmer and that there is such a thing as the Paralympics so I watched the 2000 olympics when it came to sydney and my dad projected it onto our living room wall and i became obsessed with like ian thorpe who's actually like a good friend of mine now and suzy o'neill and patria thomas who was our chef de mission in birmingham i had their pictures all over my wall when i was a kid like i just really wanted to be an olympian i really wanted to be suzy o'neill and like i was never going to be suzy o'neill i know but i was never going to be her and after the olympics finished we turned our televisions off because we didn't know that the paralympics were

coming next and so I actually grew up in training with able-bodied kids like wanting to be an Olympian like all of my able-bodied friends at training did and like I would do everything butterfly because I wanted to be Susie O'Neill and I didn't know about the Paralympics so I saw the Paralympics for the first time in 2004 just by like flicking through my television and so I came across it accidentally this like whole movement and I saw swimmers like Amanda Drannon who had a leg that looks like mine and she was swimming and I was like wait hold on hold on hold on like this is something I can do but by the time that I actually started like my Paralympic journey because I'd been training as an able-bodied athlete for so long and because I had been

training to become Susie O'Neill for so long I was like really good from like 12 years old and yeah I made my first Australian swim team at 14. Isn't it wild that you didn't even know as somebody that could have been competing that the Paralympics existed. And now, like, I have some stats here. What I've seen so far is that you're not the best at numbers. That was Laura, actually. Let's get the stats for yourself. So this has been reported that the London 2012 Paralympic Games

had 3.8 billion views. 2016 in Rio, 4.1 billion. Tokyo, 4.2 billion. So we're seeing an exponential growth. How does it make you feel now just to see the popularity and the growth of the Paralympic Games. It's incredible. For me as an athlete, I was on the swim team for 16 years,

so a very, very long time. And for like 16 of those years almost, I wanted nothing more but to win medals and kind of crush my opponents and whatever. And it wasn't until the last day of my Paralympic career where I was actually sitting about to walk out for the closing ceremony as flag bearer where I kind of reflected on my whole Paralympic experience and realised this has a massive impact. Me chasing so many medals was quite like self-serving in a way. And if I look

at the impact that it's had on the whole world, it's a huge platform. It completely flips what you believe about disability upside down on its head. And not only that, it inspires the young generation of kids who are at school now to like send in fan mail of people who are in wheelchairs that are on gold medal podiums. And like, they can correlate that you can have a disability and be a champion at the same time like what other movement in the world has done that kind of thing exactly and so to be able to see so many people tuning in like billions of people who are tuning into the Paralympics it's also actually made me appreciate what people want when they're watching sports so at the moment you know Australia are about to host the FIFA Women's World Cup

and I follow a lot of female athlete sport pages on social media and there's always comments from guys on those pages who are saying like oh my local pub football team could beat the Matildas blah blah blah and I'm like you guys don't get it like people don't just watch sport for to see the fastest or the strongest like otherwise the Paralympic movement wouldn't be so big like I'm not as fast as Susie but people still tune in and watch me swim on TV same with women's sport like you watch sport for all these different reasons like you want to see yourself represented totally what you're watching and so I think like that's why the Paralympics has been such a huge movement because it does focus on like the success of the athletes in their sports but it also

tells really incredible stories of like overcoming everything against the odds and like that's why people are so invested in the movement. What's it like being at the Paralympics and being in what I can assume would be the most populated place of so many different types of disabilities and people of varying abilities and people with cool prosthetics like what's that like for you? It's super cool I think like and I'm only just thinking about this now but like a Paralympic village has to be very accessible to like every kind of disability that you can think under the sun and the reason why you see people with disabilities out in our communities more now than ever before is because the communities have become more accessible workplaces have become more

accessible and so if you think about a Paralympic village like that's the most accessible place you're ever going to find and everybody like thrives in the village and it's so much fun because like literally anything goes but also doesn't it just reinforce this idea that the more accessible any community is the more that everybody can thrive like you're saying that in this environment where accessibility is so well thought out for every single person in every single environment and you would think that just on a day-to-day somebody who doesn't have that normal access like it's harder for them to just leave their house it's harder for them to do truly anything and you know I know that when something's an inconvenience to me or hard I

would prefer to not do it and so all it's doing is reinforcing that for people who struggle on a day-to-day, can't get to something, can't be involved in something because there's X barriers in place, it limits their ability to live such a full life. Absolutely. And I always think about accessibility and if you invest in like infrastructure or accessible programs or accessible workplaces, like it actually, it literally serves everybody. So like, for example, say at the front of this building, if there was like a ramp with an automatic door that opened up, like people who are in wheelchairs can use that, but delivery workers can use that. Elderly people can use that. At the moment, I work for an organisation called APM as their ambassador,

and we're rolling out accessible beach matting. For me, I've never been able to walk on the sand. Like I hate the beach. I hate the beach so much because it's so hard for me to go there. Which for someone who loves the water, sounds crazy. And growing up somewhere that's coastal, you would think that you would love the beach, but you haven't been able to. I think it's like if I was about to say that before you said the beach mats, because it sprung to mind Dylan Alcott. For those that don't know Dylan, he's an Australian tennis player wheelchair tennis player but he posted and I follow him it really hit me he posted a beach mat going to the beach and he's like I'm so happy that Melbourne put this beach mat in and

it's definitely as an able-bodied thing I'll put my hand up it's an out of sight out of mind a level of ignorance I don't have to think about on a day-to-day like the most of the population so you don't clock how much that affects somebody else and I remember when I saw that I thought wow how amazing it's such an easy fix such a simple thing to put a beach mat out and now everybody including yourself women with prams anyone it really does help everyone can I ask for you and maybe this is a personal question but why can't you enjoy the beach with a prosthetic limb so well I really struggled on the sand so the beach matting I walked on for the first time like four months ago and it was like one of the best days of my life so if you think like when you're

walking on the sand you use a lot of your foot muscles you kind of like grip with your toes and push I don't have foot muscles on my right side and also my prosthetic has to be like straight when I step onto it and like you know uneven the beach can be and then if I actually want to get into the water I have to like leave my leg up on shore and have someone other piggyback me in or I have to like hop from like 20 meters away on the sand into the water and then have like the waves coming at me and trying to balance and I was like it's just too hard so do we have that in Sydney or where did you experience the beach mat for the first time? I was ever in WA using that one but we have one up at Nelson Bay there's one up there it's really cool you should go check

it out. But also to think that they're so few and far between still like it's something that means that everybody can enjoy the beach and they are so rare they are so unbelievably rare. So what do we have to do as a community what do we have to do to make something like beach mats something that the councils will start to put in? Writing into council is a huge thing even like around accessible parking it's really hard to find accessible parking around Sydney and when I do find it like usually it's been taken up by people who are able-bodied which in the last six months has really started to infuriate me so like if I'm driving through Sydney now I will actually like stop my car get out and get them to move from the spot and throw your leg at them good but you should

but everyone is always so embarrassed when I like say hey you can't be parking here because like I don't necessarily need it but someone who is in a chair that needs extra space to get their chair out needs it. But yeah, it's more of just an awareness thing. So like our councils and communities are making everything more accessible that they can, but it's all done in like retrospect. So the infrastructure wasn't there in the first place and they're having to invest quite a lot of money to then make a place more accessible when they should have just done that in the first place. So it's just being really conscious about, you know, when you have new towns or communities coming up that you need to be catering for like universal design and

everything like that. So I want to talk about the Paralympics because I have a question in terms of like the races that you would compete in how do they organize it so that it's fair and that maybe that's a silly question to ask but obviously there's so many different types of disabilities so how do they sort of categorize different races to ensure that there's some sort of fairness to the race that's not a silly question at all in fact I'm even getting very confused like Thorpey was asking me about it a couple months ago and I was like I don't know I just turn up and swim like I just swim put me in a race well I know in swimming you have in terms of physical disabilities, like 10 different categories you can go into. So it goes from S1

through to S10, the 10 different categories. And S10 is the least impaired you can be. And so I'm a nine, which means that a lot of the people that I race against have an amputation below the knee or somewhere around the forearm. I don't know. Yeah. But only amputees in your race. Well, I have a race against a girl who has MS, some cerebral palsy as well, this or that, you know. So who categorises you? Like does somebody literally assess you and say you're in S9, you're in S8? You have to get classified and that's done by the International Paralympic Committee by a group of assessors.

And for me I got classified when I was like 10 and because I'm not a lizard, I'm not growing my leg back, once I was classified like that was it kind of thing. But if you have cerebral palsy, like you can kind of jump all over the place and I've actually found controversially that in the last few years because there is so much more money in the Paralympics now and you can actually, like, get a lot of money from, like, sponsors or, like, prize money and stuff, that instead of, like, doping in the Paralympics, like, no-one really dopes

but they will play up their disability a little bit. How does one police this? You can't really. So, like, you'll find that I don't know anyone in particular that's done this. I've just heard stories that, like, if you have cerebral palsy and you're getting classified, like, if you have a cold shower, that will, like, make your muscles tense up

and you won't have as much flexibility. So when they're doing all the flexibility testing on you, they're like, okay, you can be an S7, but you really should be like an S9 or something. So it was really frustrating for me as an amputee, because I would have people like come in and out of my class all the time. And like, you just can't do anything about it as an athlete. You just have to like try and swim the best you can in terms of like your personal best time and hope that if a medal comes, a medal comes at the end of the day.

Well, speaking of medals, there's been 17 of them. What is it like winning a gold medal at the Paralympics? it's a really hard question for me to answer because watching like Petraea and Susie win a gold medal at the Olympics and Ian I was like it looks like the best day of your life and it can be but for me like when you're an athlete and you have four billion people who are watching you on TV when you actually win a medal for me I just felt like relief because I had a lot of time and money invested into me as an athlete and you have to deliver like that's your job and so when you do it it's like relief and it kind of takes that joy away from you a bit and you think about what this

moment's going to be like for 10 12 years you kind of overplay the intensity of it or the duration of how long you're going to be happy for but what no one actually tells you is that when you win a medal you feel great in the moment you feel great on the podium very emotional singing the anthem very emotional looking up at your parents and like after what you've bloody put them through yeah and probably just seen how proud they are so yeah like that is one of the best moments of your life but what no one tells you is that when you go back to the athletes village it's usually in the middle of the night and you go back to your room and you close the door and it's like just quiet and you've got to be really happy with who you are as a person and like that's kind of when you

realize this medal actually does not make any difference to who I am as a person or like how happy it's going to make my life it was just like this great moment that made me feel happy for like 10 minutes or so saying that it's really great for 10 minutes and that you know so much of your identities is tied up in being a Paralympian winner like being the best what do you do when you're not doing that like how do you ensure that you still have another identity that isn't just Ellie the winner it's Ellie who does all these other things who are you but that's what I mean you know because I feel like otherwise what happens when you when you stop and you're not winning medals anymore then who are you a lot of people do struggle with like the transition from

being an athlete to being a normal person. A pleb like us. Just like trying to swim 50 meters underwater you know like that's what we all do. Yeah it's really interesting like how much of your identity you wrap up into who you are as an athlete because I remember being an athlete at the AIS. We would train like 30-35 hours a week in the pool and then like six hours a week in the gym and then maybe like another eight or ten hours on like bikes and Pilates and whatever and every single moment that you're awake you're thinking about being an athlete. It's like every decision that you make in your whole life for days and days and years and years is like is this going to make me a better athlete

and you become like obsessed with it. But ultimately like a lot of the decisions that you actually make as an athlete aren't your own. You're kind of like not in the steering wheel at all. You're kind of this robot that everyone tells you what to do and how to do it and you do it and you push yourself to the absolute limit every single day. And it can absolutely break you, especially if you don't win

because you put all of your worth on if you're going to win or not because you've got a team of like 50 people who have invested so much time in you and like they just want you to win you know kind of thing so it's a lot of pressure to put on someone and if you don't win it can totally break you but you find like even if you do win you still feel broken in a way at the end and in the back end of my career I took a lot more ownership over my swimming career and made sure that I was taking time to spend time with my family and friends because it's so important to me and I found that I was just generally happier as a person and it really helped that transition. How in that case then do you deal with failure? That one's really really

hard. I was chatting to one of the FIFA soccer players from the US team actually and she was saying like when you retire the transition based on like how easy it is is how much you valued winning and I valued winning so much when I was younger like that's when I was winning all these like gold medals and stuff but I was always like chasing something bigger and better and bigger and better and every time I achieved what I wanted to I never felt better about myself as a person and that's kind of when I realized winning is not everything it's not everything at all and so like I'm actually not competitive at all anymore I feel like I never have to prove myself at all anymore either like my manager a couple of months ago was like do you want to do SAS and I was like

why would I do that and she's like yeah but she's like you can prove yourself I was like I don't need to do that like wow kind of thing so I was like absolutely not like they don't feed you on that show. Well, yeah, they don't. And you need half a barbecue chicken before you leave in the morning. We already heard that. So like in terms of dealing with failure, like I didn't put any of the emphasis on winning towards the end of my career. Like I didn't win any gold medals in Tokyo and it was the best experience that I ever had. I think it's important that you said that because we even feel like that. We talk about it all the time. I'm really bad for always chasing the next thing. And like, as soon as I get something, I'm like, what's the next thing I

can do? What's the next thing I could get? And it, every time you get it, it doesn't change how you feel. Like what you said is absolutely right. We need to sometimes just sit in the moment and look at what we have done and where we are and how we're feeling that moment instead of being like ticking a box, let's chase the next thing. Cause it doesn't bring happiness. It's that hedonistic treadmill, right? Where you think hedonic treadmill, where you think it's hedonistic. I think it's hedonic where you think you'll be happier. Is that like a Peloton? No, it's when you think when I get this, I'll be happy. When I get this, I'll be happy and you never actually get to the happy you just keep changing the benchmark just

keeps moving I know and you're happy for a little while but then it goes back to your normal whatever your preset is yeah and like I spent a lot of my my career focusing on like swimming and winning and everything but like if you think about like the house that you grew up in or like how wealthy your family was or the suburb you know you grew up in or a swimming race like anyone can beat you at that like it's actually it's not really in your control at all and what I found like especially being in like the Paralympic movement and reflecting on like my whole swimming career it's always like the hard moments that I've come through like my double shoulder reconstruction or breaking my foot or breaking my hip and like coming out on the other side of those and still

giving it my best kind of thing like they're the bits that I will always take away from my swimming career like I don't even think about the medals trying to I actually bought my medals in today and trying to find them for you two was so hard can you show us I can't wait to see them and hold them isn't that funny because it's just the importance has changed for you yeah and like I remember I was looking for my gold medals because people usually only want to see the gold medal so I bought one in for each of you can we take it home no I'm joking but like it was quite funny because I was going through I was opening a box and I was like nope silver nope silver nope silver and even I was like god how many bloody silver medals do you have I actually

said that to myself and I'm like where is the gold but also like the fact that that you think that that's not good enough for people that people need to see a gold one to for it to be valid you I would prefer the gold. Let's be real. It's gold over silver. Speaking about successes, speaking about failures, what about quitting? When so much of other people's time and energy and their dedication to you is also tied up in your career as well, like your parents, your coaches, there's so much and so many

resources that go into making you successful. It's not just your own determination. How do you tell people when you're going to step away from something? I've been telling people for like eight years that I was going to retire. it's my last time I was like John Farnham times six yeah seriously it was a closing down rug sale I know it was a closing down rug sale it's like people definitely knew and it was interesting because my performances in Tokyo like I was actually swimming the same times as I had my whole career but like the whole Paralympic movement had kind of stepped up to where I was

so whilst I didn't win gold medals like I was still happy with my time and I was thinking like these young 14 year old kids are coming and they're going to be better so get out now on the I wasn't yet not getting out kind of high but I was like get out now kind of thing but I think that's like why it really shook people when Ash Barty retired when she did because she was like at the top of her game she hadn't been playing tennis at that level for very long like I was on the swim team for 16 years she's only 25 and she's only 25 and it really shook people but because she values like her family so much and she values that she wants to do other things with her life and I remember like people were shocked they weren't angry at her or upset at her they were

just shocked like why would you give all of this away and I admire her so much to say yes to that like big time because it would have taken a lot of bravery more because of like the outside variables and the pressure the pressure from outside coming within and she just stuck to her guns I'm like you go girl I reckon she'll come back one day you know I don't think so I reckon she'll have a baby play golf and then one day like a like a Williams sisters you know how they went away for a while then they came back I reckon she'll make one reappearance and anyway we're not getting into that. Let's talk about you falling in love. So you are very happy in your personal life with your partner, Sylvia. How did you meet Sylvia? How long have you been together? And how did you

two meet? Look at the face. I know she's blushing and she's so stoked. No, it's just a funny story because Sylvia used to work for Paralympics Australia. And so I remember meeting her for the first time at the London games, like in 2012 at the after party, I'd had like 40 tequila shots. apparently i actually met her like a few weeks earlier but i don't remember and she like sat at my table at the staging camp and had dinner with me and i don't remember but i had 40 tequila shots it will blame that that wasn't actually 40 but so responsible drinking this is a long story but what happened in london was i was like totally straight up into that point and then the first night of the after party i was drinking out of like this vodka bottle in the corner with the

Russian swim team like having the best time kind of thing I don't remember anything after that moment I woke up the next day in our team this is like I can sell this stuff now that I'm retired but I wake up the next morning in our team manager's room being like where the fuck am I kind of thing and I had to try and piece together what happened the night before and everyone's like you were like kissing so many girls last night and I was like what like what do you mean like everyone kind of thing and I was like I'm not a little dance top and you're like I'm not that's not me no well firstly that wasn't me and I'm straight so I don't know why I was doing that anyway a few nights later we're at the after another after party and that's when I remember

meeting Sylvia didn't think anything of it but like yeah a couple of months later I saw her at the Paralympian of the Year Awards and I was with my boyfriend at the time and I'm like she looks really beautiful kind of thing and then we just got talking and then yeah I don't know I kind of was she one of the ones you like no passed on the day absolutely not so that night thank goodness because we probably wouldn't be here now if she'd seen you after 40 tequilas I was only like 21 or something so you know when you don't know your limits at that stage like I would never do that now was that a confusing time for you though going from being in a heterosexual relationship with a boyfriend being like hang on a minute I've got some changes happening here I mean how did that

identity shift work for you was it an easy transition were you like oh I have clarity now about my sexual identity or were you just kind of like whatever fluid let's see what happens I think like it took me a long time to accept for telling other people like because I had to really be sure of it myself like that it wasn't just kind of like a fling but one thing that I did notice about being with Sylvia versus like being with boyfriends in the past was that it did feel really natural and it did feel really right and like all of these feelings that people talk about when they're really happy and like meet the love of their life and whatever I never felt that with anybody else so I was like I don't know I kind of just went with what I was feeling and it just

felt right it's funny I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday actually and she's in her 50s and she was straight until 40 she just didn't know and then she finally was with a woman and she was like I felt quote I felt like I was at home I felt like I came home I found my home and she just didn't know until that moment so she was always happy yeah but the difference in the moment where you're like oh this is how it should feel yeah and you kind of don't know until you feel it and you're like oh okay this is what everyone's talking about yeah was it up until that point did you just think oh maybe I haven't met the right guy like maybe I'm still looking for the right guy I was only 21 so yeah oh yeah baby confusing but like all through school I just

assumed that I was straight and I remember you know bringing boyfriends home and introducing them to mum and dad at like 20 that's cute and mum's like yeah and then when I was with a girl she was a bit like oh yeah was their response like had they grown to be so accepting or was their response at the beginning a little bit like oh this is what we thought for you like how are they now they're great now my family are really great now but at the beginning my dad was always really good with it my mum struggled because of her religion and everything and she just always assumed that she had this path set for me and this path that she had set for me I've like not gone down it at all you've been like hurricane I also think for some parents like I know for my

mum when my brother brought home his first boyfriend mind you he was like still at school and we didn't know it was his boyfriend. He just had a sleepover. And then my mum was like, hey, do you have a hickey on your neck? Let's talk about this. Oh, I love that for him. Yeah, I love it for him too. He's married now, so we're happy. But I do remember for my mum, there was never an upset or a worry about the fact that he was in a relationship with a guy. It was the fact that she was worried that his life would be harder. She just didn't want anything to be hard for him. And that was always her fear. And I think like we live in a society that's

been so rapidly changing, you know, since then gay marriage has been legalized. Like there has been so much more acceptance and change and we're from Wollongong it's not very far away but 20 years ago it was a bit of a small town mentality at times and I think that there has just been this wide acceptance and fear that maybe parents had doesn't need to be as profound now big time but I think like the biggest trouble that I had was a lot of people were like trying to meet a validate like a label like you're either this or that and like it takes a really long time to figure out those parts about yourself especially if they're quite new to you and so I thought that was the real struggle is like I felt like there was a time limit on like you have until next Saturday

that must be so fucking confusing because there must be part of you that's like well I really like this person but I don't know if I'm never ever gonna date a guy again like if I choose this then does that mean that people are gonna be like oh yeah change your mind did you if you like what do you do i know that's what i mean by like i had to try and decide if it was going to be a fling or not but i was talking to my sister in january i'm like i was down in melbourne i was like i don't know this week i'm looking at a lot of guys and then i texted the next week i was like no i'm back what is next for you where are we going to see you what are you doing well i my biggest dream is to become chef de mission of brisbane 2032 that's like the team manager of the brisbane

2032 game so well this is the place to put it out if you're listening yeah i put it i put it everywhere like literally i put it out everywhere and yeah i'm just kind of vibing whatever's coming my way you guys know we never finish an episode without a suck in our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week brit give me the low down of the lows i don't tell me you got bitten by a camel again i'm gonna keep it super quick oh yeah got bitten by a camel nothing else bad happened to you this week that's my suck Trying to think of what other terrible things happened in your life. My sweet is, I want to say the obvious, went to Uluru,

but I'm not going to say it because that is obvious. My sweet is that on the plane the Qantas Air Hostesses, they sometimes give you out like a lint ball or a chocolate or a goodie at the end. Well, we were at the back of the plane and there were a few extra at the end, so they got like just a big handful and gave us them. So I reckon I had like 15 lint balls. I mean it was pretty good.

That was my sweet. It's pretty easy to please. We did go to Uluru, but yeah, Lindt chocolates are right up there. What's yours? Okay, so my suck is that the fire alarms in my house, actually, I feel like I love where I live and I love my house, but there's been so many small things going wrong lately. Things that like go wrong in your rental property and then because we're in the middle of a rental crisis, no one's going to fix them.

You know, that's going to stay there for forever. Yeah, because they're like, you're not going anywhere. Yeah, they're like, we know, we've seen the market. We don't have to fix that because you're fucked. yeah so we in the middle of the night last week it was like 3 a.m in the morning the fire alarm went off like for a minute and then we were like fuck that was weird half an hour later fire alarm goes off again for a minute so annoying so that happened for the entire from three o'clock until six in the morning and we thought okay the the batteries are broken our fire alarms are like

hardwired into our house anyway we went to the there was i don't know i'm giving you blow by blow we went to bunnies we went to bunnies got batteries replaced it right thinking it's all fine nothing nothing nothing happened during the day the day was fine get to bed 10 o'clock at night it starts again we had an entire night we ended up ripping the fire alarms out of the roof i would have done that night one because they went from 10 p.m until one in the morning the fire alarms went off every half an hour for a minute anyway we ended up getting someone out to inspect them and it turns out that if you have a drop in humidity it can fuck with your fire alarms only at night time all right i think we got it we got it your fire alarms are going off

all through the fucking night well you didn't get bitten by a camel what's your sweet mate zero sympathy zero sweet i'm not gonna go for the obvious one either ularu and northern territory king's canyon fucking great king's canyon was my fave glamping but my sweet was coming home to my kids yeah and your doting husband marley did not care one iota like she was like hey mom Why'd you get me? But Lola was stoked. Like she was so stoked. She like climbed up on the chair and she was like jumping up and down,

almost fell off. But, you know, she was just stoked. Yeah. And then there was gastro. So, yeah, it's been a real highs, lows, high lows. That's it, guys. We hope you love the episode. If you have accidentally unfiltered or ask on cards or anything else,

write them into Instagram, Life Uncut Podcast. Just put that it's an ask on card or an accidentally unfiltered or a confessional or whatever funny random story you want us to know about. And don't forget, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love love.