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"I don't care, I'm alive". Those are the words Bali bombings survivor Ben Tullipan uttered to doctors when told he would lose both his legs. "I remember thinking I'm alive, I got a second chance of life," Tullipan told the Mercury this week. But immediately after the 2002 terrorist attacks, Tullipan was given only a five per cent chance of survival. He lost both of his legs, most of his stomach muscles and received 63 per cent full thickness burns to his body. "I remember every single detail of the bomb going off, everything right until they loaded me on the Hercules and they said there is 10 minutes until we land in Darwin," Tullipan said. "I was in [Bali] on a buying trip and I walked into the Sari club to get a bottle of water before coming back out to wait for a taxi ...I was about five metres from where the van exploded." Australia's worst injured survivor from the attacks which killed 202 people and injured a further 209, was told he would never walk again. Tullipan has taken great delight in proving the doubters wrong and 17 years later he is thriving. He has learned to walk again on two prosthetic legs, started playing competitive golf with incredible results, and become a disability advocate and volunteer. Learning to walk again has been the biggest challenge for the father of two. "The doctor said don't bother trying you will never walk again," he said. "The odds have been against me, especially considering I have no big toes to balance, I'm deaf in one ear and about 50 per cent in the other and have only about half my stomach muscles, but I can now walk. "I even try to run after the kids on occasions without any luck." Tullipan also takes great delight in teaching disabled golf and "showing them that you can move forward and live life as an amputee or disabled". It is one of the reasons why he, wife Kerrie and kids Sheridan and Rory joined the Follow the Sun Relay, wherein a Winnebago Motorhome is completing a 12-month lap of Australia. The relay involves different people undertaking different portions of a journey all around the country. The Tullipan family drove from Canberra to Sydney. The Mercury caught up with the family during their stopover at Corrimal Beach Caravan Park. Read more: Corrimal on track to be Australia's first autism-friendly town "I'm pretty excited about doing this, about showing that even with a disability we can still get out and live life and have fun," he said. His wife Kerrie added the family also wanted to show what holidaying in a motorhome is like for a disabled person. "It can deter you from doing this kind of thing sometimes, but it doesn't mean that you can't go on holiday and have fun," she said. "People say to [Ben] that if they didn't see him getting active, they would still be sitting on the couch feeling sorry for themselves. "People say he's changed their lives, and that's what keeps you going. "We've see grown men cry because they thought they wouldn't be able to do something like that again. It's amazing really, what (Ben) does. It's life changing."

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