The reason for this diary, apart from being something we can look back on an enjoy in years to come, is to perhaps help other people in wheelchairs who may be thinking of embarking on a trip such as ours. and would like some first-hand stories and advice. Of course the main piece of advice I can offer is "do it!"

We are a family of four - Donna, Neil (parents), Chelsea (13) and Richie (17). Richie has cerebral palsy which restricts his mobility. He can communicate normally but cannot walk unaided. His chair is a manual one which he can operate, but he usually depended on us during this trip. I do not think anyone could do the things we did by themselves in a wheelchair, for reasons that will become obvious later on.

9th December Brisbane - Singapore

The day I had been planning for two years finally arrives. At around lunch-time, after a couple of calls to Yellow Cabs Brisbane who run maxi-taxis, we set off on our big adventure. (I say a couple of calls, because you are never sure whether the taxi you ring in Brisbane will even turn up. Booking ahead does not guarantee anything - it depends on who is in the area at the time. This can be quite frustrating for someone in a wheelchair - or anyone for that matter).

After checking in and having the mandatory fast food we board the Qantas Airways 747-300 ready for take-off. (I should say at this stage that I booked the flights through Flight Centre because our itinerary was a bit complicated, but I found a cheap round-the-world fare on Bestflights.com which I got them to match. It was a One World fare which stipulated that one leg had to be on Finnair, thus going through Helsinki to London. When you're flying for sqillions of hours another couple don't really make any difference. Everything else to do with the trip I did myself, including the organising of seats on planes. You can do this yourself on-line with some airlines, but I rang Qantas initially to do it. A couple I changed later on-line. We needed seats close to the toilets for Richie for obvious reasons.)

An interesting development as far as wheelchair air travel goes is the fact that you have to give the dimensions of the chair now. They can refuse to take some chairs if they are too big or cannot fold up.

Anyway,everything went according to plan and eight hours later we arrived in Singapore. We were a bit worried about customs and made sure we had prescriptions for all medication (Richie is on an anti-epilepsy drug and I had an emergency supply of sleeping pills!) However our fears were unfounded. It was a breeze.