Australia Day 2022: Late Canberra disability advocate Sue Salthouse receives Order of Australia honour

One of the ACT's fiercest advocates for people with a disability, Sue Salthouse, was killed when her wheelchair accessible motorcycle was struck by another vehicle on the Commonwealth Avenue bridge.

This year on Australia Day, she has been posthumously honoured as a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM).for her significant service as an advocate for people with a disability, and to the prevention of family violence.

Meanwhile, the driver of the other vehicle is due to face the ACT Supreme Court in March after pleading guilty to drug-driving, and not guilty to culpable driving causing death.

The fatal Canberra collision was a tragic bookend to a remarkable life.

Ms Salthouse was born in Melbourne and was educated at Kilvington Baptist Girls Grammar before achieving a degree in agricultural science.

She became a teacher, working firstly in Lorne, Victoria, then moving to Alice Springs to teach and work with members of the Aboriginal community. That experience was a formative one in her career, providing a deeper understanding of how Indigenous knowledge is shared and communicated, and she advocated strongly this to be recognised in a more formal way.

The connections she made there with some of her students continued throughout her life.

She left Australia to trek in the Himalayas and for a time lived in Nepal, then in Italy.

She returned to Canberra to live and was horse-riding in the Snowy Mountains in 1995 when she fell and broke her back "arriving by surprise", as she recalled it later in a radio interview, "in the disability sector".

She attempted to return to teaching but found it difficult to re-assimilate, with difficult wheelchair access to schools at that time and the added physical impairment of a reduced lung capacity from the accident, which made it more difficult to use voice modulation to manage a classroom of young children.

The accident exposed her first-hand to the issues of gender and disability discrimination and Ms Salthouse pivoted her career to set about addressing those problems, becoming the chair and then president of Women With Disabilities Australia.

A fierce fighter for social justice issues and a mentor for many young women with disabilities, Ms Salthouse became Canberra citizen of the year in 2015 and five years later secured the rare "double" when she became ACT senior citizen of the year.

"Mum always had the default position of 'yes' to everything," her daughter, Luisa Fearnside said.

"She believed that every individual had something unique to offer the world, and a true belief that anyone can do anything they want to.

"She had this innate curiosity and interest in people. She had this ability to sit and be with people, listen to them, and figure out what it is they were going to bring, and then push them gently in that direction.

"She was always very appreciative of the people she had around her and was very good at championing other people, and elevating others to believe in themselves."

Even having a wheelchair accessible motorcycle was because "she didn't have to get out in and out of a car to get places, which is quite time-consuming".

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"That motorcycle opened up a broader range of places she could get to reasonably from her home."

Before her death in the vehicle collision, she had worked for Lifeline and ran her own consultancy company specialising in assisting people with disability.

Described as generous and kind by all her friends and colleagues, Ms Salthouse was hugely respected in the ACT community for her open and enthusiastic engagement across many forums in her quest to create a more inclusive society.

A group known as the Salthouse Sistas was formed in her honour, where women gather to network and share stories about the struggles of women with disabilities and gaining employment.

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