Mobility comes at a high cost

The prosthetic leg staring me in the face is emblazoned with logos demonstrating Brendon Morrison's dedication to both the Canberra Raiders and the Collingwood Football Club.

Morrison's lifeless lower limb looks out of place on the tablecloth next to his bacon and eggs.

As he walked into the restaurant in the Canberra suburb of Ainslie and sat at a table away from me, I had not noticed both his legs below the knee were missing and had been replaced by $25,000 worth of metal and fibreglass.

At the time he strolled in, there was nothing telling in this stranger's gait. The only thing I noticed about him was his physically imposing stature above the knees. The lower part of his body was obscured by the tables as he walked through the eatery.

Morrison is a bear of a man: old enough to remember a time when brick outhouses existed and tall and burly enough to resemble one.

It is not until the person I'm waiting for, amputee Michelle Kelly, arrives later and introduces me to Morrison, saying she invited him along as well, that I realise he too is an amputee.

''We've got one leg between the two of us'' is Morrison's description.

Together they lead the Canberra Eden Monaro Amputee Support Group, along with Patrick Smith, also a double leg amputee, who now lives in north Queensland.

The three of us - Morrison, Kelly and I - sit down and soon after Morrison needs to point out the workings of his prosthetic leg and so he puts it on the table.

''There's a click in it somewhere,'' he says. ''[The technicians] have pulled it apart but they can't find where it is.''

Morrison is proud of the fact he learned to walk again unaided, except by the prosthetics themselves.

He lost one leg because of diabetes and the other from a workplace accident involving fire and says it's easier for him to walk now as a bilateral amputee than it was when he still had one good leg.

When his second leg was being reduced by surgeons in 2010 - one toe at a time and then part of the foot, the ankle and so on - he finally asked the doctors to amputate below the knee.

It meant both legs had the same sort of prosthetics and were even on the ground.

''When my second leg was amputated I thought, 'Finally, I'm free'.''

And he's happy to show off his legs.

He almost always wears shorts, even on cold days.

''I only put on trousers for funerals and weddings,'' the 57-year-old explains.

His legs are the best a person in his economic bracket, a plumber turned public servant, can buy.

Each leg cost $8500 and then he added bits and pieces. Flexible feet cost him $7000 and he uses several hundred dollars worth of shuttle locks so he can detach the leg more easily and inner liners to stop blisters.

''I work to pay for parts,'' Morrison says.

Parts for prosthetic legs are expensive. A woman who wants to wear shoes with heels can buy an ankle which is adjusted by moving the pin for $2500. A bionic foot which adapts itself to the bumps in the ground like a normal foot costs $35,000.

Michelle Kelly, 54, says she spent decades as a single mother so money is in short supply.

Funding special parts for her leg beyond what the public health service has given her is difficult.

''We get given kind of archaic legs,'' she says.

''I had no choice but to have this neanderthal leg.''

Her prosthetic leg's ankle only moves slightly.

Aesthetically it's pleasing and looks like a normal leg but practically I'm told it's not much better than a peg leg.

''They can't change my leg to suit my way of walking,'' she says. ''You can't make an inanimate object move.''

A leg costing close to $10,000 is expensive for these two Canberra amputees.

Funding varies in each state and territory for the cost of prosthetic additions as well as repairs.

The federal government's National Disability Insurance Scheme may make funding more available and more uniform, which is something that Morrison and Kelly hope for.

The number of Australia's amputees is expected to gradually rise as people live longer and the ageing population peaks.

The Canberra Eden Monaro Amputee Support Group has given help to 100 amputees in the past year.

Canberra Hospital amputates 20 to 30 legs a year.

The hospital's director of rehabilitation medicine, Dr Chris Katsogiannis, expects amputee numbers to rise gradually as the population ages.

The question is, what is the best possible technology available for these people?

The answer is there are far better legs available than those worn by Morrison and Kelly, although it is unlikely they will ever have the opportunity to wear them.

When a bomb blew off Private Paul Warren's leg in Afghanistan, he thought he would never see active service again.

As the doctors soon after cut away his knee and some of the flesh and bone above, hope of him being anywhere near as mobile as he once was appeared to vanish. Three years later, the Queensland man expects to have the ability to return to the front line in any of Australia's war zones along with other amputee soldiers using the latest weapon made available to the Defence Force.

A new bionic leg has already allowed their American counterparts in the Navy Seals to re-enter the most dangerous war zones.

Last month, Warren was due to be fitted with the same rust-proof leg which can resist large amounts of water.

In the past three years the same model leg, known as the Genium X2, which contains a tiny computer processor, has already been worn in battle zones.

''That's the goal for most of us who have lost limbs,'' Warren, 33, a father of two, tells us before his trip to Sydney to have the leg fitted.

A Defence Department spokesman says amputee soldiers are unsuitable for redeployment but this does not mean they will not be deployed in the future.

German company Otto Bock, the world's leading prosthetic maker which supplies the Australian Defence Force, has developed the bionic leg, which collects 100 signals a second and anticipates where its owner wants to put their foot.

The leg is currently only available to military personnel at a cost believed to be around $150,000, the bill being picked up by the taxpayer.

Otto Bock's Australian general manager Terry Gallagher says Australia is one of the few countries able to provide this prosthetic leg to soldiers, who wear it in the rain and mud.

The next version of the electronic limb about to be released to soldiers will allow them to use the legs to swim. ''This is as close as we can get them to full functionality,'' Gallagher says.

The Defence Force's director general of mental health, psychology and rehabilitation, David Morton, explains that the latest prosthetic legs last a decade.

''They're much less cumbersome, they're not strapped in, they've been tailored to heavy physical requirements,'' Morton says.

The problem for people such as Morrison and Kelly is that this leg is fifteen times more expensive than the kind they can afford.