Inside ‘world’s first’ luxury resort for spinal injury victims – how designers made everything adjustable for life in a wheelchair

Like everyone else on holiday at a Sydney waterfront resort, guests at Sargood on Collaroy can move seamlessly from their room to the sand, splash in the sea, and surf the waves lapping at their doorstep.

Unlike the majority of other beachgoers, the only thing Sargood’s guests can’t do is stand on their own two feet. But here at Australia’s – and possibly the world’s – first luxury resort purpose built for people living with a spinal cord injury, life is lived to the full.

Six facts about Hitler’s Nazi getaway – now a luxury resort

Around the world, accessibility advocates such as Robin Shephard in Britain, and Hong Kong-based architect Thomas Schmidt, welcome such inclusiveness. But perhaps even more remarkable than the facilities offered at this property is the fact that it’s there at all. If not for community persistence, just another homogeneous high-rise might be standing instead on its prime beachfront site.

The 4,455 square metre property on Collaroy Point had been owned by Sir Frederick George Sargood, an English-born trader who in 1920 donated it as a recuperation home for Australian soldiers returning from war. Continuing the benefactor’s vision of it as a place of healing, the property became the Royal Alexandria Children’s Hospital, to house children suffering from tuberculous and polio. Later it was used as a mental health facility.

Eventually the old buildings were demolished and the government had plans to sell the land, until a community group – now the Sargood Foundation – banded together in the late 1990s to secure the site. Digging up the property’s history gave the group leverage to preserve its original intent, says Gregor Millson, the foundation’s joint chairman.