Photo: Wayne Regan in the hallway of his Gulargambone home.
A delayed trip to the hospital has highlighted a Gulargambone man’s need for disability-friendly housing as he questions the long wait to move into a suitable new home.
Fifty-two-year-old Wayne Regan woke up one morning in mid-April with no feeling below the hips.
He couldn’t walk but managed to ring an ambulance.
When the paramedics arrived, they couldn’t get the stretcher bed into his Yalcogrin Street home because it was too high off the ground and didn’t have outside ramp access.
“They were in no position to be able to do it by themselves,” Wayne said.
Local Rural Fire Service members were called in and provided a more manoeuvrable hammock stretcher.
The hallway and doorframes are barely wide enough for two people to move shoulder to shoulder, so personnel had to drag him in the hammock, head to toe.
Mr Regan spent the next three weeks in hospitals in Dubbo and Gilgandra for a bacterial infection in his bloodstream that was approaching his heart.
He returned home earlier this month.
Wayne said it took about two hours between the paramedics arriving and him leaving the house.
House ‘unsafe’ and ‘dangerous’
Of the ten years Wayne has lived in Gulargambone, eight have been in his current home.
Previously from Sydney’s Blacktown, Wayne says he loves the house, but the emergency demonstrates that it’s unsafe for him as a diabetic amputee.
He agreed in October 2024 to a house swap with a friend living on Yalcogrin Street, who died the next month, and a Homes NSW representative confirmed on 14 February that Wayne was approved for a transfer.
Homes NSW manages both houses.
In an email, the representative said “this is a formal process and can take some time.”
The email did not confirm that he would receive the address he had requested, although an agency spokesperson told The Coonamble Times that it has been identified as suitable given it’s “fitted with appropriate modifications for the tenant.”
Since the confirmation, Wayne and his occupational therapist (OT) has tried to contact the agency for access to complete a final disability access inspection before he can move in.
“I’ve been in that house with my wheelchair, and I get in and out freely. No problems at all,” he said.
“You ring the head office and you get, ‘oh, the representative’s not available. We’ll give her your number and everything to get in contact with you’ and she never does. Then you ring back again, and the same story again.
“I think over the whole period that all this has been happening, I’ve spoken to her probably once, maybe twice.
“I’ve been here for so long, I didn’t really want to move. But after all that happened the other day, I had to realise that this (current) house is not safe.”
The Coonamble Times asked Homes NSW how long the transfer process usually takes.
“The property is currently undergoing restoration works while it is vacant to ensure it is in top condition for the incoming tenant,” the Homes NSW spokesperson said.
“We are currently working with the contractor to find a safe and appropriate time to enable the tenant’s Occupational Therapist (OT) to enter the dwelling so that they can view the proposed new property, prior to the tenant accepting it.”