When tragedy befell the Bloom family, it was a little magpie called Penguin that came to the rescue. The whole process was documented in intimate photographs taken by Cameron Bloom.
Create a free account to read this article
or signup to continue reading
There's a child-like energy and enthusiasm to Sam Bloom that defies the paralysis consuming more than half her body. Not three years have passed since she leant against a patio railing overlooking Ban Krut beach in Thailand and plunged five metres to the ground below, breaking her spine.
"She was pretty close to dying," Sam's husband, Cameron Bloom, says. "She basically became paralysed from her chest down."
After surgery at a Thai hospital, Sam spent six agonising months in hospital and rehab back in Sydney, training for a new life without walking. It also meant the end of other activities - hiking, mountain bike riding, surfing - that had been key to Sam's identity.
Miserable and frustrated, she returned home to Sydney's northern beaches with her husband and young sons, Reuben, Noah and Oliver. Though she did not know it then, a baby girl was also to join the family.
\Within weeks of Sam's homecoming, Noah found the magpie abandoned, possibly blown out of a tree, at nearby Bilgola. Christened 'Penguin', her adoption into the Bloom clan was serendipitous. As Sam was finding her way, so too was Penguin.
"Penguin was really awesome for Sam because she had something to do," Cameron says. "She learned to fly and she would move further afield and not come back for days. Then three days later she'd come squawking at the front door and let herself in."
Meanwhile, Sam took up canoeing, at first as a kind of therapy, but it rapidly developed into a professional obsession. With only the power of her arms, she will propel herself all the way to the Paracanoe World Championships in Milan later this month. "It's her determination, her competitiveness," her husband says.
These are qualities that the couple, together since their early 20s, share. Cameron, a photographer, established an Instagram account to share the tender moments in the Blooms' daily life as Penguin grew.
The images, in which the magpie participates in everything from brushing teeth and showering to guitar playing and dinner, have attracted almost 90,000 followers. Cameron never expected photographs of his wife and children to resonate so widely. "Who's going to want to see a picture of Ollie with a bird on his shoulder?" he thought.
But Bradley Trevor Greive, the Tasmanian writer behind the world-wide, best-selling The Blue Day Book, is working on a book about Sam's recovering and Penguin's rescue, to be published next April. By then Sam hopes to be in training for the The Paralympic Games in Rio.
And Penguin, free to come and go from the Blooms' home as she pleases, is likely still to be warbling and waiting for the boys when they get back from school. Though she now takes flight for weeks at a time before returning to the family. "We're both a bit more confident now," Sam says.
