Need for speed gets Grant rolling
GRANT Plowman travels at just one speed.
Flat. Out.
Life might be trying to send him a message that he should slow down, or take it a bit easier, but this 56-year-old speed demon isn’t having a bar of it.
Grant just goes as fast as he can, whether in his 4WD, on his recumbent bicycle, on his ride-on mower, or on his scooter.
“Hell yeah — I love speed!” he says.
“I love corners, and I love adrenaline.”
The pace at which Grant whizzes through life is even more impressive when you learn that his parents were told he wouldn’t survive long after being born with cerebral palsy, and then that he would never walk.
Grant himself was told just six months ago that his most recent major spinal surgery could leave him in a wheelchair full-time.
But if there’s one thing Grant seems to love more than going fast, it’s proving people wrong.
He immersed himself in research to find ways to improve his health outcomes, and now gets around principally using a walker, works out in his home gym every second day, and rides his bike up to 40 kilometres at a time.
“If you give up, you’re buggered,” Grant says.
“If you’re not rolling, then you’re just not trying.”
Grant is cared for by his wife Marites, who says he is the most inspirational man she knows.
“He never complains, and he always volunteers his time to visit or read to friends with multiple sclerosis,” she says.
“Grant tells me I’m better than any radar gun, because I’m always the one telling him to go slower when he drives.”
Thanks to funding through the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the pair has been able to modify parts of their home to maximise Grant’s independence.
It is an independence which Grant fights for fiercely, hardly surprising when you consider his life to date.
Even though he did not take his first step until the age of seven, Grant then went on the become a champion dirt car racer, rally car driver, go-kart racer, and quad-bike rider — in 1981 he was named the Junior Sportsman of the Year in south-east Queensland.
He started driving at 14 (“completely illegal! – I was never taught, I just watched,” he laughs), and after leaving school, he learned to drive a bob-cat, and at one stage bulldozed 6000 apple trees.
It was a V8 Kingswood however that started “a great love affair with speed”, and it is this love affair with all wheeled contraptions that continues to bring him joy each and every day.
“I am just so blessed in this life,” Grant says.