The miracle of movement for Kate, reported joyously on our front page today, is the stuff of spirit and 

inspiration. 

It is the fairytale turn to a sad, cruel and tragic happening – now happiness is overflowing like a bottle of pop.

Just two weeks after a merry Christmas time, 28-year-old Kate went off to a weekend outing – and bounced awkwardly and freakishly off a trampoline onto the ground.

It left her a quadriplegic – and this for a sunny and bright woman who’d grown up in the sound, protective and good grounding of family in Tamworth, a South Tamworth Primary student who went on to the alma mater of her mum and dad, Craig and Lyn, at Tamworth High.

Like them, she was a keen sportswoman at school and after school and heavily involved in netball, basketball, touch footy and athletics.

She’d recently moved as a psychologist to work in Newcastle.

After she fell on that terrible Sunday, she’d endured a mercy dash to John Hunter hospital, a lengthy operation, two weeks in intensive care and nine weeks in the spinal unit of the Royal North Shore hospital and since then countless hours and crucial personal pain and trauma in rehabilitation.

She’d fractured and dislocated the C5 and C6 vertebrae – and she was told by doctors she would have little to no chance of walking again – or using her hands.

Her friends, and a multitude of Tamworth people, plenty of them friends or friends of the family, or fellow students, young ones who’d grown up on the sidelines of 80s Tamworth and kids of parents of friends or acquaintances, were struck numb at it.

In early April, her dad Craig reported Kate had been able to stand using a four armed support frame and assistance from medical staff.

Now, she has taken some miraculous first steps, defying the odds to walk again.

She’d required full time care, in a split second her life had changed, but she’d carried her “impossible dream”.

The pain continues of course and there are thousands more steps for Kate – and improving on where she is going.

Like Craig McDonald has said: if you were a believer, you’d call it a miracle. Even the non-believers have to accept it is miraculous. Go Kate.