Award-winning author, renowned rock climber and mountaineer Paul Pritchard shares the journey to finally conquering the infamous Totem Pole
Welcome to Season 2 of The Brain Game Changer podcast. I am your host, Melissa Gough. In this week's episode I had the wonderful pleasure of speaking with award winning author, renowned rock climber and mountaineer Paul Pritchard.
Winner of the 2018 Australian Geographic Spirit of Adventure Award, Paul talks about growing up in the UK and how the opportunity a teacher gave him to try rock climbing led him on a global adventure. A near fatal accident, extensive rehabilitation, Paul has defied all the odds and his story of human determination and survival is an exceptional one. He has also become a keen speaker and advocate about disability. Let’s get into the interview.
Links:
Follow @thebraingamechanger on Instagram
Email: thebraingamechanger@gmail.com
Follow @_paulpritchard_ on Instagram
Paul Pritchard www.paulpritchard.com.au
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Melissa Gough 0:04
Welcome to The Brain Game Changer, where heartfelt stories, awareness and education can change the game. My name is Melissa and in each episode, I talk with inspiring humans and organisations from across the globe, who share significant adversities, triumphs after tragedy, and those game changing moments to provide you with some useful tools and resources to take with you into your everyday life. In this week's episode, I had the wonderful pleasure of speaking with award winning author, renowned rock climber and mountaineer Paul Pritchard.
Winner of the 2018 Australian Geographic Spirit Of Adventure Award, Paul talks about growing up in the UK, and how the opportunity a teacher gave him to try rock climbing led him on a global adventure. A near- fatal accident, extensive rehabilitation, Paul has defied all the odds, and his story of human determination and survival is an exceptional one. He has also become a keen speaker and advocate about disability. Let's get into the interview. Good morning, Paul and Welcome To The Brain Game Changer podcast. It is great to have you with us today.
Paul Pritchard 1:18
Good morning Melissa. It's really great to be here too.
Melissa Gough 1:21
So I'm just going to share with our wonderful listeners that Paul and I live in the same country, we just live in different parts. Although you'll probably notice, as the interview goes on, Paul has a very different accent to me. Even though I'm very aware of his part of the world, I lived there for 15 years, but what I'm going to ask for, which is, something I ask everybody at the start of the interview, we're just going to get a little bit of a backstory about where you grew up, and what was life like for you growing up?
Paul Pritchard 1:48
Well, I grew up in Lancashire, near Manchester, and it was very deprived. I was born in the 60s, by the way, on the top of a quarry, my parents were going through a very messy divorce. At about age 13 I went off the rails and I was setting the moors on fire, and I was shoplifting. I was still going to school, and in fact, one of the teachers in school took me rock climbing, and I felt like I was good at something for the first time in my life. So that is how I found rock climbing, which I then pursued with a passion for the next 15 years until my accident, which I guess I'm going to tell you about soon.
Melissa Gough 2:30
It must have been such a nice feeling because growing up as a teenager is hard anyway, where we're working out who we are, we're discovering the world around us, our hormones are going in all different directions, and you're going through quite a significant event in your home life. It must have been such a game changing moment for you, when a teacher who took some effort into taking you to do something that's totally different from being in a classroom and just you know, work in books, work in books, and it's lovely that you say that it just sparked something in you. It gives you a new sense of purpose, a new sense of worth from that moment you love to climb. So then how did you keep pursuing that practice? What did it involve for you?
Paul Pritchard 3:13
Well, I fell in with a group of climbers that I met and my home life wasn't too hot, so I did move out early, and I moved to the mountains of Wales at age 17. That's where there was just this whole community of climbers then, which were just doing crazy things, and I got fully involved. I was pretty much going on two mountain trips a year for the next 15 years.
Melissa Gough 3:42
Wow! Because as you've described, and I've already said it in the intro, you are one of the UK, foremost climbers of the 80s and 90s and have been described as a fierce competitor on the hard routes all around the world. So during this time, what are you also doing to help fund, you know, your passion for climbing. What's great is I'm hearing that you're surrounded by a good group of like minded souls where you're all sharing the same passion. How were you making ends meet? You moved out of home very young, what was going on then?
Paul Pritchard 4:15
It was really economically deprived at that time in the UK, probably even more so than now, 4 million people unemployed, and what that meant was that not many people could actually get a job. But that worked in the climbers favour because it just meant you could go climbing every day and pick up an unemployment check, which was 18 pounds a week.
Melissa Gough 4:38
Bless..
Paul Pritchard 4:39
Really little money, but you could get 40 pounds a week if you created your own business for a year, and so you had to make it work for a year so I bought a slide projector with my grant and went around the country doing slideshows to climbing clubs are in pubs, or univeristies and that got me some money. It really helped me. I was also one of these kinds of poster boys for ropes and climbing shoes, that you see so many out nowadays but at the time that was quite new. Or you could also get grants for going on expeditions from the Mount Everest Foundation, so even though I was dead, poor, I was famous.
Melissa Gough 5:24
That's brilliant, and also well done for being brave and showing the courage like you say, it sounds like you're also very entrepreneurial, and had that sort of drive in you from young. Even though as you stated, the unemployment check wasn't a thriving prospect, you managed to turn lemons into lemonade, as they say, and the reputation was around your climbing ability and how advanced and how phenomenal you were. So doing this, going around the country and shining your light on all your amazing climbing adventures is what sort of also spurred you on to write your first book in 1997, called Deep Play? I'm just going to share with our listeners that Paul won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature for this book.
Paul Pritchard 6:06
Yes, that book has become the book for mountain literature that defines the 80s and 90s. It was a collection of essays. I wrote a column for a magazine. So Deep Play was a collection of articles from the 80s and 90s.
Melissa Gough 6:24
I read a little bit of what you've written, you're a very good writer, you're very articulate, and you take the reader on the journey with you. So it sounds like you already had that ingrained in you. It was already instilled in you from young.
Paul Pritchard 6:36
I think so. But I'd never read a book, I'm mildly dyslexic. I read books now, and I've got an English degree, but growing up, I never read. I guess I'm very imaginative.
Melissa Gough 6:47
Very creative, indeed. So with some of that prize money that you won as a result of your first book, Deep Play, the prize money sent you on your quest for further global climbing opportunities. One of those was coming to Australia, somewhere that was on your list to conquer was a place called the Totem Pole. I'm just going to let our listeners know that it is located in the Tasman National Park, which is in Tasmania, and it looks like a sea stack. It's really popular amongst climbers. What was your interest in that climb in particular?
Paul Pritchard 7:21
I think it was me and my accident that made it popular! Oh, it just went ballistic then, all over the place in the news, but a bit of history at its first free ascent in 1995. So me and my partner, Celia, were trying to do the second free ascent of this, meaning climbing with your hands and your feet on the rock instead of pulling up on artificial aides. So it was in the days before mobile phones, it was just me and her down there, on this really wild cape, and I was right at the bottom of the Totem Pole. The top part sticks out of the sea, and it's so slender, it's four metres wide and 65 metres tall, so slender, it sways slightly when you stand on top of it.
Melissa Gough 8:10
Oh, gosh.
Paul Pritchard 8:11
So I'm swinging right about like a metre above the sea, and there's a halfway ledge, which is about the size of a sofa, that's where Celia was. The rope flicked off this shard of rock that was about the size of a laptop computer, and it fell from 25 metres straight into my head, and I didn't hear it coming at all. So the next thing I knew I was hanging upside down blood pouring into the sea. Celia was now by me. She descended the rope from the ledge and she had to get me out right in a system of slings, and put her helmet on me because I wasn't wearing a helmet. Then she had to climb back up the rope to the ledge, and then she had to haul me 30 metres up to this ledge on a nine millimetre nylon rope. It was an absolutely superhuman effort. I mean, it's gone down now in the annals of mountaineering cliff rescues because it was such a courageous effort. It took her three hours by the time she got me there, her hands were cut down to the bone, then she had to make me safe and then leave me, to get herself off the Totem Pole. Then she had to run six and a half kilometres for help to use the telephone at that campsite. Then 10 hours after I had been hit, the rescue helicopter came and a paramedic called Neil Smith came down to me. He thought that he was in for a simple corpse recovery, judging by the amount of blood on the ledge.
Melissa Gough 9:47
Gosh...
Melissa Gough 9:47
So when he knew that was still alive, and he's there was no time to lose, he put a neck brace on me, clicked me to his harness, and he threw me over the edge of the ledge and we both abseiled back down the wall into a waiting, tinny, little motorboat that had been co opted as a lifeboat. The tinny was going up and down on the swell for two metres. So on the upsurge he had to cut the rope with a knife, and we both fell into the tinny. Quite exciting!
Melissa Gough 10:21
Interesting way to describe it Paul! Quite exciting! Thank you for allowing me to lean into that moment and share it with our listeners. You know, it just seems surreal, I'm even sitting here talking to you today. Now the boat makes its way back, I gather to land and they put you in an ambulance and send you to the hospital. Is that what happens next?
Paul Pritchard 10:42
Yes, there is a helicopter waiting on the beach. So straight into the helicopter and flown to the Royal Hobart hospital.
Melissa Gough 10:49
So we're now going to talk about that time in hospital. I believe it's 12 months in the hospital. You've received a traumatic brain injury. You have hemiplegia, and I'm just going to explain to our listeners, that means that it's a one sided paralysis. It could be either your left or your right. There's limited mobility, and it can impact many different layers of our physical health, especially our memory and our speech. Can you talk us through some things that you remember during that time?
Paul Pritchard 11:19
Yeah, I was actually in the Royal Hobart for six weeks. That's all, because I was only here on holiday. So I had to go back home at some point. I was in a coma for five days, it was an induced coma. Then once I was coming round from the coma, it was like a nightmare! I thought that the nurses were out to kill me and I didn't know where I was or what was going on! Gradually, I got to know that I had a serious accident, and at the end of my six weeks in Hobart, I was able to be put in a wheelchair and taken outdoors. I remember having my first ice cream at the Salamanca Market and just feeling absolutely sublime, you know. Then I was medivac back to Liverpool Hospital, where I spent the next 12 months.
Melissa Gough 12:15
When you say you have medivac back to the UK. Can you just describe to us what that means?
Paul Pritchard 12:20
So I was stable enough, however, I was still a stretchy case still. So I took up 11 seats on the plane, a doctor had to come from, I remember she was from Scotland to escort me back, and a nurse as well. So it was a really involved operation just to get me back home. Then I landed in Manchester and transferred to an ambulance that took me to Liverpool.
Melissa Gough 12:41
That's when the next stage of your rehabilitation started. Thank you for sharing what that journey was like. It sounds like it was quite a process. Also still during a time when your body is incredibly fragile. How was Celia through this time, and also I'm sure it was such a shock for your family to hear this news as well. They must have been so relieved to see you even though you are still in the condition that you were. They must have just been so grateful that you were still alive!
Paul Pritchard 13:16
Yeah, I mean, everybody thought they'd lost me. By the end of six weeks when I got home. I mean, I was quite cheerful. I think it was really my parents who were really relieved to see me just basically my old self or not really my old self because I was very labile. I remember laughing when Princess Diana died and then crying, like really happy things. I would laugh at really serious things, but I couldn't help it. It's what quite a lot of brain injuries are, people do that. In fact, when Celia actually said that she would like the relationship to end that was five months into my hospital stay. She told me whilst driving back, we had had such an amazing journey. It was like seven years of really intense experiences. She was an amazing climber as well, and went all over the world. And when she told me, I couldn't help but break into hysterical laughter.
Melissa Gough 14:17
Oh, wow. So you'd been together for seven years.
Paul Pritchard 14:20
Yeah.
Melissa Gough 14:21
I know off air we discussed that you're both very much, you know, you loved each other. You were very much in a committed relationship. You shared so many common interests and she had so many monumental climbing experiences together, and then she decides it's too much and she's going to end the relationship and then you break out into hysteria.
Paul Pritchard 14:41
Yeah, yeah. I was telling you, wasn't I, that around 80% of relationships don't survive brain injury because it's just bonkers, what goes on? I think that I was always a strong one in the relationship. I mean, she's like, massively strong as well, but there was this dynamic like there is in any relationship. Suddenly, I was reduced to a baby. For all intents and purposes, I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't walk. I couldn't say much, I couldn't talk at all for about four months, and then words started coming back. I could always think of words, but I couldn't get them out. What you're hearing now is me 25 years later, still can't. I'm still not quite fluent.
Melissa Gough 15:29
It's quite phenomenal where you are now. I know in that moment, you describe that when your relationship ended, I mean, you reacted in the moment of how you were and where you're at at the time, did it sort of hit you later that that relationship had ended? Was it then that you may have felt some sadness or the reality of it ending?
Paul Pritchard 15:47
Even then, I mean, probably the same day I was crying. It's just emotions that go all haywire. Yeah.
Melissa Gough 15:55
I'm sorry to hear that that happened. But I also know that as we talk more in the interview, we're going to talk about an amazing person you have met. But during this time of your recovery, which is quite intensive, as you've described, you're in hospital for 12 months. Is this when you also got the inspiration and the drive you where you wrote your second book called Totem Pole. It's a narrative about your personal journey through this experience, and through having hemiplegia and you know, the totem pole itself, and that journey. This book also won the previous prizes that we mentioned for your first book, as well as the Banff Mountain Book Festival, and had been translated into four languages. How did that spark come about, while you're in rehabilitation, and working out what your life is going to look like? You think, Okay, well, I'll just write another book!
Paul Pritchard 16:42
I thought that my climbing career had ended. But because I just won these awards for Deep Play, kind of the year before, I realised that I was good at writing. I seem to be just as intelligent as I ever was, even though I was a basket case for all intents and purposes. So I borrowed a laptop from my friend and I started typing with one finger, on my left hand, my non-dominant hand. I mean, it was either that or just go down to the day room and watch reruns of The Bold And The Beautiful for a year. I just started writing, and at the end of my stay in hospital, I got a manuscript.
Melissa Gough 17:17
What a journey, what a process. Do you feel like that also played a part in your recovery? Did it help sort of motivate you? Did it help you keep encouraged?
Paul Pritchard 17:25
Very much so on two levels? First of all, the OT's really encouraged me to start writing, because the actual fact of putting words down and playing with words, it's like physio for your brain. But more than that, I think revisiting that trauma on a daily basis really helped me not to be bitter about my accident, or helped me except what had happened to me quite quickly. I think.
Melissa Gough 17:52
I would agree with you. I also didn't go down the route of why, why did this happen to me. I went down the route of shock and confusion and you know, couldn't believe it, but I didn't go down that route. I would say quite early on, I also accepted and surrendered that this had happened to me. I think at times it was probably harder explaining it to people around you.
Melissa Gough 17:52
Look at you, it was only last year and you're doing the podcast now, it's amazing!
Melissa Gough 17:57
Thank you, that means a lot. I'm still on my journey in other ways, but thank you, that means so much. What this podcast has done has created opportunities where I get to meet amazing and inspiring humans like yourself. I'm also just going to share with our listeners, there is a little bit of a six degrees of separation in meeting Paul. I lived in the UK and I got there in the late 90s and was there for 15 years. But before I went over, I was also introduced to climbing. I don't climb as much now, I would like to but yeah, in the early to mid 90s I did my best to be a climber. I was nowhere near to Paul's capacity, but I loved it. I love the feeling of it. I got to go climb at a few pretty awesome places here in Victoria Australia, one in The Grampians, called The Arapiles. Then when I also moved I had a brief stint of staying in Liverpool as well, and I met sort of a friend of friend of Paul's friend from many years ago. When I started this podcast, I reached out to Mike and we're having conversations and said "Melissa, I think I know someone who I think would be really inspiring for your podcast." That's when he talked about Paul, especially because Mike was someone I used to also go climbing with. We used to go to some climbing walls in the UK. So I really have much gratitude for these moments.
Paul Pritchard 19:35
You might have been in Liverpool when I was in Liverpool in hospital then!
Melissa Gough 19:39
It's possible! I was there in '99 in Liverpool.
Paul Pritchard 19:44
I spent the whole year 98 in Liverpool.
Melissa Gough 19:47
Wow. So you're there the year before. Talk about the synchronicities and the journey of life and where we walk so I know exactly where you were and I know exactly where you spent a lot of time. As I've stated, you wrote your second book and you have won awards. But you also wrote a third book, which was five years later called The Longest Climb again, winning more awards. Can you talk to us about what that book is about?
Paul Pritchard 20:11
Well, The Totem Pole ended on a beach in Tasmania, where the BBC flew me back. It was actually on my one year anniversary.
Paul Pritchard 20:20
Wow.
Paul Pritchard 20:21
Suddenly, I'm like, overlooking the Totem Pole, watching somebody climb it and recording my thoughts into my dictaphone. So that is where that book ended, but that's not where my recovery stopped. So, five years later, which is seven years after my accident, I climbed Kilimanjaro.
Melissa Gough 20:40
That's phenomenal, well done!
Paul Pritchard 20:42
To do that, I'd go on this journey where I would climb 1000 metres higher each time I went away and I started off by hillwalking, tiny little hills in Wales. Then I found myself on top of Kilimanjaro, but that's where that book ends. I sat on top of Kilimanjaro. That's really where I felt like my recovery had ended as much as it could, you know, and now, I have done a lot more.
Melissa Gough 21:10
Since then, you sure have! I'm just going to add, first of all, climbing Kilimanjaro is a hard task for any person without any significant TBI or physical, you know, impairments. Since Kilimanjaro, you've also done caving, sea kayaking, and river rafting. It seems like you've still got that thirst for life. So when you do go back to see all the staff at the Hobart hospital, I'm sure you're in there every day, they almost become your family. Did you stay in contact with anyone when you left the hospital?
Paul Pritchard 21:46
Well, one of them became my family! I kept in contact so much that I ended up marrying one of my nursing team in Hobart, and she came back to Wales and we lived in Wales and worked at local hospitals.
Melissa Gough 22:02
What a beautiful union, and you also went on to have children. Tell us a little bit about your children.
Paul Pritchard 22:08
We had two children. At that point, in the early 2000s. That region of Wales was more economically deprived in some regions of Poland, and we decided that we would move to Tasmania. So that's why I'm here now. We started a family in Tasmania. Well, the marriage didn't last but we're still famous friends, and we got two lovely children out of it.
Melissa Gough 22:33
I love how even through the end of a marriage, you still have such optimism and like you say you have a respectful co parenting wonderful relationship, and I have no doubt your children are thriving as a result.
Paul Pritchard 22:45
They seem to be. In fact, in 2019, I took my boy who was 12 to the Himalayas and he had his 13th birthday on top of a Himalayan mountain.
Melissa Gough 22:56
What a way to spend your 13th birthday! How amazing was that! How was the experience for him?
Paul Pritchard 23:01
Yeah, he absolutely loved it. It was a real rite of passage, you know? Yeah.
Melissa Gough 23:06
It would have been such a rite of passage. So what year did you go back and decide to conquer the Totem Pole once and for all?
Paul Pritchard 23:14
I went back to the Totem Pole in 2016. I've been going there every year since coming to Tasmania. I've been going up taking the wall, which has no mean feet, it's up and down hills out to the Cape. I would just look at the Totem Pole, I would just appear at it down in this chasm. Then about five years before I climbed it, I started to think, Wow, maybe I could actually climb that piece of rock. But you know, I only have one working arm and one working leg. So I had to develop this kind of one handed rope climbing technique. I practiced that, and eventually I knew that I could climb 35 metres which is what you have to do to the ledge, and then 35 metres above. So in 2016 I climbed it! Steve Monks who was the first real ascensionist of the Totem Pole led me up it and it was an absolutely amazing experience! I took the same swing that I took 18 years before that resulted in the rock falling on my head and 25 metres higher when I climbed up the rock 25 metres, I caressed the rock scar where the rock had actually fallen from and that's when I realised it was the same shape as a laptop computer, kind of like a shadow rock like an axe head or something. Then as I was clambering onto that ledge, that was really spooky. I thought I could hear Celia screaming at me, she lives nowhere near she lives in Scotland, but I swear that I could hear her screaming at me "you're gonna have to help me here if we're gonna get you out of this," like that and, and then, after 126 one hand pull up that rope, I finally sort of clambered onto the summit and an 18 year loop or circle.
Melissa Gough 24:59
What a poignant and significant moment in your life to finally conquer the place where you almost lost your life.
Paul Pritchard 25:06
It was a real laying of the ghost I think. Ever since then I've been way more confident. Because, I mean, there's speaking difficulty I have. It did mean that I lost a lot of confidence in kind of going back out. Probably by now it is the other person's problem if they don't want to listen to me. (chuckles).
Melissa Gough 25:26
So true, Paul, so true with you. You know, you're being authentically yourself and the right people will embrace it. As you say, you finally ticked off and successfully climbed the Totem Pole in 2016. This was also filmed as a documentary, I believe, and it was called, Doing It Scared, and you've got a little bit of a cheeky sense of humour. You said, ' it's a very scenic place to have a head injury, that's for sure! (Paul chuckles).
Paul Pritchard 25:51
Have you seen it?Have you seen that doing...
Melissa Gough 25:52
I have watched a little bit, because I think you mentioned it when we spoke off air. So I did a little bit of research on it. Also that's one thing I also said to Mike, when I told him I was interviewing you. I said, even in the short period of time that I've got to speak with you I said I can already tell he's got a good cheeky dry sense of humour, and I admire that.
Paul Pritchard 26:12
That film touches people's hearts, and I've made like 10 or 12 films, but that one really touches people, and so I still show it all the time to audiences. I just did three workshops for Wildlife in Tasmania, and really got a lot out of it.
Melissa Gough 26:33
There is so much power through storytelling, through film and through people sharing their personal experiences that as you say, it does touch people, it does resonate with people, and it does inspire people.
Paul Pritchard 26:45
Yeah, it does, doesn't it.
Melissa Gough 26:46
One thing that you said, in researching you, you said if the accident had not happened, I would not have learned some crucial life lessons. I still use them repeatedly, each day of my second radically different life. Can you give us like one or two of those crucial lessons or the tools that you use on a daily basis?
Paul Pritchard 27:08
I still fall over quite a lot, you know. I only had stitches out a couple of weeks ago from my head. So it's this strange mixture of determination to keep going, but also patience to be able to just sit back and let yourself feel again, again, again, and for 25 years, shaped me into this totally different person, where I feel that I've got something to teach.
Melissa Gough 27:38
You certainly have!
Paul Pritchard 27:39
I think that it all comes with accepting your situation. I mean, rather radically accepting it, you know, like, I got attacked a few years ago now, in a disabled hate crime, where a fella came across the road and punched me right in the head and my head hit the pavement, the guy ran off, a passerby helped me to my feet. I was actually taking my kids down to a matinee performance of Wind in the Willows at a local theatre. There's nothing else that I could do except accept that person who hit me, he was just mistaken. He’s just a mistaken, confused individual. It's not his fault, and so that kind of level of acceptance I'm talking about, you know,
Melissa Gough 28:23
First of all, I'm sorry to hear that that happened, but your mindset and your attitude through challenging moments like that is quite something. You certainly have got something to teach us and, and so much more to teach us.
Paul Pritchard 28:35
It's very difficult because of my speech. But that's why I write, that's why I write this stuff down because I can write and take my time and I can actually really write well.
Melissa Gough 28:46
You can.
Melissa Gough 28:47
So as we get into the year of 2022, you've just released your fourth book called The Mountain Path. Also this year, you participated in quite a phenomenal expedition called the Larapinta Trail where you walked with other people. This trail is no easy task, it's no easy feat. It's nearly 225 kilometres long. Can you tell us how that came about?
Paul Pritchard 29:15
I walked it with three other people with disabilities. A guy with cystic fibrosis who has only 38% lung function. There was woman with stage four lung cancer, another brain injury, a fellow with brain injury who is very strong and has use of all four limbs, but he's got a really shocking short term memory that he can't remember where he puts stuff all the time, like constantly and can't think what he wants for breakfast and stuff like that. Anyway, I've always got this idea that for disabled people to be included in society, they've got to be out there out there out there, all the time. In the media and in and in the news and just doing stuff, not because they're an inspiration, but just because that's what normal people do. It is appalling the level of inclusion for people with disabilities in society, but at the same time, the majority of people with disabilities that I know are very, very creative and very, very resilient and they will be fantastic in any workforce. So that's what we're doing with this film is we've effectively fighting for inclusion in society yet again.
Melissa Gough 30:33
No truer words said! I think all forms of disability, physical disability, invisible disability, invisible injuries, our life changes. We're already trying to put in the fight every day, and then we're also up against it in society. It's great what you're doing to create more awareness and to also say, hey, you know, there are things that we still can do, we still got so much to contribute to the workforce to society. There is creativity, there's resilience, there's strength, there's empowering others, it's leading by example. There are so many positive qualities that we can show.
Paul Pritchard 31:08
Yeah, it's all about empowerment, isn't it?
Melissa Gough 31:10
It is, it is indeed.
Melissa Gough 31:17
You've just finished this amazing trail in 2022. You've got your lovely children. Even though your marriage didn't work, you have met a lovely partner, who you've been with for the last 10 years, and I got to meet her briefly online. She seems really wonderful. Can you tell us how you met Melinda?
Paul Pritchard 31:36
Yeah, we met at the school gate, because we both got children in the same grade. But we knew each other for quite a long time, and then our previous relationships went belly up. So that's how we got together, I like to say we met at the school gates! (chuckles). That was 10 years ago. So now we're totally a unit.
Melissa Gough 31:56
I'm so happy to hear that after everything you've gone through, you've met somebody who continues to share your journey with you.
Paul Pritchard 32:02
Thank you. Thanks. No, she's wonderful. Yeah.
Paul Pritchard 32:06
And she'll hear this too, so you'll get some bonus points.
Paul Pritchard 32:10
Yeah!
Melissa Gough 32:11
I feel like I've climbed, I feel like I've walked this interview with you in just hearing everything you've gone through. Thank you for sharing. Now. I'm just going to finish up with one more question and I asked every person that I interview. So the name of this podcast is called The Brain Game Changer: where heartfelt stories, awareness and education can change the game. If there's one piece of vital information that you want our listeners to take away with them. If there's that golden nugget of advice that you want them to try and take on board, what would it be?
Paul Pritchard 32:40
When I climbed the Totem Pole, I couldn't climb it with my hands and my feet like regular climbers do, so I had a climbing rope up the Totem Pole. I think that that rope and the 10 people that helped me carry camping equipment and climbing equipment and filming equipment out to the end of the cape, this symbolical also of support that people with disabilities need to really live their dreams. I actually realised this long held dream because of those people because of that rope. I think that with support, that all people, not just people with disabilities, but all people are capable of more things, extraordinary things.
Melissa Gough 33:22
That's really poignant, and thank you for sharing. Paul, thank you so much for being with us today.
Paul Pritchard 33:27
Thank you very much, Melissa. It's been an absolute joy to talk to you.
Melissa Gough 33:31
You too. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you found the show really valuable. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, our guests and the topics we discuss, please head over to our Instagram page @thebraingamechanger. Make sure to subscribe and tick those five stars so you never miss an episode. In the meantime, continue embracing those game changing moments. Have a great week and see you again soon. Take care.
