Dan Buckingham
It's a privilege to be involved with Attitude... it's not just
the people - it's the places, the sights and the situations I find
myself in. This year alone has already taken me from the beautiful
tropical rainforests of Papua New Guinea, following their only
athlete to have ever won a medal at any Paralympic or Olympic
Games, to the sad sights of Christchurch following February 22nd's
quake where everything, everywhere I looked was
affected.
However, working in Television is a long way from where I thought
I'd end up... I guess paths in life are fluid and forever changing,
and it's hard to imagine what may have happened if I hadn't
acquired my disability a little over a decade ago.
I'm a tetraplegic, which basically means I'm paralysed from the
chest down, and I have lost a small amount of function in my hands.
It all happened in 1999 - I was living in Dunedin, studying
Surveying at Otago Uni, when I put my head in the wrong place in a
rugby scrum. Something had to give, and it was my 6th and 7th
vertebrae, which in turn damaged my spinal cord as the vertebrae
fractured and dislocated.
It became a time to reinvent myself, and a career in Surveying was
one of the first things to go out the door. I dabbled in a few
other subjects and took time out to travel, before settling on
moving to Christchurch and studying Journalism at the University of
Canterbury.
The years following were a dream run where my life revolved around
a mix of study, sport and travel.
Wheelchair rugby became a huge part of my life. I played for teams
around the globe, spending up to 6 months away at a time playing on
the American circuit. Most importantly, I got to represent my
country with the Wheel Blacks, touring places like South Africa,
Japan, Sweden and Canada with my teammates. I also got to be part
of the team that won Gold at the Athens Paralympics; 7 years on
it's still an achievement I struggle to put into words in terms of
the feelings it evoked and what it meant to us.
Studying gelled perfectly with my lifestyle throughout this time.
My schedule remained flexible, but more importantly my brain
remained engaged amidst the training, traveling and
competing.
However as studies drew to a close, I felt the need to keep my feet
on the ground and begin a career. Throughout my degree I had always
figured I would get in to writing, but an opportunity to be
involved with this show made it an easy decision to move to
Auckland at the end of 2007.
Now into my fourth season with Attitude, the best way I can
describe the way I feel about what I do is that it constantly feels
like a privilege.
