ABC News Breakfast star Charles Brice’s remarkable story

Australia’s newest breakfast TV star would never have become a journalist if a life-changing accident hadn’t left him paralyzed.

ABC News Breakfast presenter Charles Brice grew up in Adelaide and dreamed of becoming a pilot. At 19, he was well on his way to getting his pilot’s license when he decided to live and work on a friend’s family farm 155 miles away.

Not long after picking up his life and moving to Loxton in 2010, Mr Brice went on a Saturday morning motorcycle ride with his new friends.

But just a few miles from home he rounded a bend and after a series of bumps flew over the handlebars and landed headfirst on the ground.

Unable to move his phone or take it out of his pocket, he lay on the road for 30 minutes until the group returned on the way back.

Mr Brice was airlifted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where doctors told his devastated family he had shattered two vertebrae in his neck, completely severed his spinal cord and had a five per cent chance of ever walking again.

Emergency surgery to fuse his C5/C6 vertebrae left Mr Brice sedated in intensive care for three weeks, where he remained on a ventilator for almost two months.

A future in journalism had never occurred to him until he spent fourteen months in rehab, where watching TV kept him busy.

It ignited a passion in TV news, despite the fact that reporters in wheelchairs seemed nonexistent.

In 2019, Mr Brice began his journalism career at the ABC and within two years made his debut in front of the camera.

He quickly became familiar with News Breakfast viewers as the program’s South Australian correspondent.

Last week, Mr Brice packed up his life and moved to Melbourne to become a permanent member of the News Breakfast team.

Over the next twelve months he will produce and present for the national broadcaster’s breakfast programme.

“Adelaide’s finest is now part of the News Breakfast studio team and he will be with us both in front and behind the camera as a presenter and producer over the coming year,” News Breakfast announced in a Facebook post on Monday.

Mr. Brice is also a disability advocate and public speaker. He co-founded the Wheel To Walk initiative, which has raised more than $300,000 for spinal cord injury research.

‘I knew I wanted to do TV journalism, but at the time it didn’t seem possible. I had never seen anyone with a wheelchair or disability on TV,” Mr. Brice recently wrote for the NeuroSurgical Research Foundation.

“It’s great to get that attention for disability on TV and also in front of a national audience.”

“Hopefully it can open doors and give hope to other people going through similar circumstances.”

Mr. Brice also recently shared a candid insight into the challenges of online dating for a paralyzed patient and shared his dating tips.

“There were definitely times when I thought, ‘S***, would anyone in my situation want to date me?’ he told ABC’s Hack show on Triple j.

‘I was only a few years post-injury, so I probably felt a little bit – I wasn’t ashamed of my situation – but I thought if I made my disability public and showed my wheelchair in the pictures in the apps, I probably wouldn’t get the success rate that able-bodied people would achieve.

“So I didn’t show my wheelchair at first and some people took it very well.”

He also recalled an awkward conversation with a girl he met online after she agreed to meet him for drinks.

“I said, ‘Can I throw you a curveball?’ ”, he recalled.

“I was in a motorcycle accident and broke my neck, so I sit more than the average person.”

The girl replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, but at least you can walk a bit,” she replied.

Mr. Brice continued, “And that was a bit of an awkward moment where I had to say to her, “Look, I can’t walk at all.”

“She was a soldier, she was great.”

Mr Brice shared the clip on his social media and was flooded with messages from female viewers after he revealed he was single.

‘Single? Charles call me,” one woman commented.