Paralympic Gold Medalist Dylan Alcott’s Travel and Packing Tips

I’m lucky that I started traveling pretty young. I was born with a tumor on my spinal cord, so I’ve been in a wheelchair my whole life. For a lot of people with disabilities, people think we can’t travel because it might be a bit hard. This was a myth that my family wanted to bust. And we were very lucky to be from a bloody beautiful country in Australia. So we used to do a lot of traveling in our own state, Victoria. I remember going water-skiing up in Echuca, which is not too far from where I live in Melbourne, on the river. We used to go to Sydney to see my other extended family, and then my first overseas trip was to a place called Vanuatu when I was about eight years old. I finally got a bit better and my health was good and it really opened up my eyes to other cultures. And obviously moving on with my life, travel became a pretty essential part of it. Not just for my job, but also as something that I love to do.

I’ve probably been to between 70 and 80 countries. It is part of the job. You get to see the whole world and you get to spend time in pretty much every continent at some point throughout the year. When you travel for sport, you see a lot of hotel rooms, a lot of cars, a lot of room service, and a lot of tennis courts. You don’t really get to do too much else. I’ve recently retired from tennis and it’s definitely a bit of a different experience now when I travel and don’t have to be training and playing the whole time, which I love.

I think one of my best travel experiences was in 2013. I won a gold medal and a silver medal playing wheelchair basketball in the Paralympics and I actually retired from sport for a year and went backpacking around the world by myself in my wheelchair for about seven or eight months. One of the most nerve-wracking things, being in a wheelchair, is that it could be quite daunting and not everywhere is accessible. But I learned if you ever need help in life, all you have to do is ask for it and 99% of people will help you. I think I visited about 25 countries on that trip and just had an incredible time and learned that if there’s a bit of will, there’s a way to be able to get things done. I like talking about that because a lot of people with disabilities feel they can’t travel. But more importantly, a lot of the travel industry, whether it’s hotels, airlines, experiences, they think we don’t travel, so we get left out of that conversation. 

I think countries that are really willing to listen to people and support are the ones that I had the best experience with. I had a really good experience in Tokyo. They have these things where you push a button and part of their escalator becomes a flat platform and then you can go down it. So my wheelchair can go on it. I’ll never forget that. It was like the future.

Countries that are a little bit further behind on their disability and accessibility inclusion journey are the ones where sometimes it can be a bit tough, for example, going into a bar or checking into a hotel. If they just assume that you can’t do it, they don’t actually listen and talk to you, so they’ll make the decision for you that you can’t enter their venue. There’s always a way. Anybody who listens to lived experience would be able to get it done. But the world is becoming a more inclusive place, it really is. And it’s an exciting time to have a disability with advances in technology, but also advances in people’s perceptions and wanting to learn.

I’ve been a recipient of many a broken wheelchair, put it that way. When I was playing tennis, we used to travel in a big case to protect it, because if that broke, I can’t play a tournament. I once got my tennis wheelchair two hours before a grand slam started. That was not ideal. They are starting to understand a bit more, starting to take better care, which is good. My wheelchair is my independence. My wheelchair is my legs. Without that, I can’t move, I can’t do anything. I’m a realist. Accidents happen, but it’s about trying to minimize as much as you can just so people with disability don’t lose their independence.