Born with phocomelia, Deb Gray rode motorbikes and travelled the world

Born with malformed legs and no arms, Deb Gray lived her life to the full, working switchboards with her feet, hanging out with rock stars, road-tripping across America and becoming a mum.

Candid, strong-willed and fiercely independent, she shared the "highs, lows, the sugar and the sh*t" of her remarkable life in a memoir, A Simple Twist of Fate, launched weeks before her untimely death in hospital a week ago.

Born in Bairnsdale, Victoria in 1957 with no arms or thigh bones, Deb was the middle child of a loving Lakes Entrance fishing family.

She credited her relatively normal life to her "magnificently innate" feet that were "born to rattle rattles, drum drumsticks, pick on the odd guitar string and use knives and forks, paintbrushes and pencils".

"I had a lot of friends that treated me quite normally," she told the ABC, in what was to become her final interview.

"I didn't really know what the word disability meant — even though I was only 3 feet 8 inches [111 centimetres] high.

"It's the way you think."

Loving childhood

Throughout her life, many people have assumed Deb Gray's phocomelia, a congenital malformation of the limbs, was the result of Thalidomide, an experimental morning sickness drug prescribed to women in the 1960s.

But her mother could not recall taking any such medication.

"If I'm not Thalidomide, I'm a simple twist of fate," Deb said, referencing the title of her book.

After she was born, doctors kept her away from her mother's eyes until her father arrived at the hospital, Deb said.

"Mum took one look at me, and she said, 'She's my daughter and I'm taking her home', whilst being advised to send me off [to an institution] and forget I existed," she said.

Raised alongside brothers Geoff and Jim, Deb went on to have a normal and loving childhood.

Riding on the back of her dad's pushbike or in the cabin of his truck, making mud pies and cubby houses with her brothers and playing with her dolls, she recalls "magical" support from her siblings and parents, who never "mollycoddled" her.

She said it was common for her mum to sit her on the floor with colouring books and pencils, even though she didn't have any hands to hold them with.

"I remember training my feet like you trained your hands," Deb said.

Meeting Prince Philip

As a "medical curiosity", Deb received much attention from strangers, specialists and the media throughout her life.

During one of her numerous stays at the Royal Children's Hospital, she remembers serving a plastic cup of imaginary tea to a visiting Prince Philip, who she described as an "extremely leggy man, sitting on a child's wooden chair with his knees up around his ears".

In her book, she describes a never-ending cavalry of well-meaning medical professionals, academics and experts, telling her what she needed to live a "normal life".

Refitted with artificial arms and legs as her body developed, she felt that her cumbersome and uncomfortable prosthetics were largely for the cosmetic benefit of fitting in with others.

She could write much faster and more accurately with her more dexterous feet.

Consequently, she would often ditch the irritating prosthetics at the front door when she came home from school, developing a rebellious, free spirited, "tomboy" streak that would steer her throughout her life.

Rebel with a cause

A teenager living in a coastal country town during the Puberty Blues era in Australia, Deb longed for the affection of a steady boyfriend.

Wanting to prove that she was as adventurous, capable and worthy as anyone else, she said she would puff on cigarettes with friends behind buildings at high school and drink at the local surf club dances, where she "learnt to be a ratbag".

"I was a very Suzi Quatro-type girl," Deb said.

She admitted to driving a car illegally using her feet to hold the steering wheel, while younger brother Jim worked the pedals. 

"We had cricket matches, we drank a lot and did things we shouldn't have done. It was part of living in the 60s, 70s and 80s," she said.

But her teenage years would be marred by a string of tragic road accidents that claimed the lives of her friends and family members.

At 15 years old, grieving the loss of a close friend to a drunk driver, she was thrown in the police lock-up overnight after a session of heavy drinking at the surf club.

The following year, she would leave home and school for the city, where she was in the first intake of live-in residents at the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Centre at Glen Waverley in Melbourne's east.

Learning how to use her artificial arms for employment, she was taught to pull plugs out of holes and run a switchboard and learn clerical skills, typing with her feet.

"Everything was run with my feet from then on."

Glass ceiling

Back then, career prospects for people with disabilities were typically limited to menial and unpaid work.

Deb said she was consistently overlooked for promotions to managerial and supervisory roles, while she watched less qualified people climb company ranks.

Despite being the poster girl for the Commonwealth Public Service in 1981, with her image plastered on trams promoting workforce inclusivity, in reality she felt there was an unbreakable glass ceiling of systematic discrimination towards people with disabilities.

She said she would drown out her frustrations by indulging in boozy wild nights.

But she loved music and took singing lessons while living in Melbourne in her 20s, even once taking out second place on a episode of TV talent show New Faces.  

A tenacious groupie, she would find her way through backstage doors at various shows to become personally acquainted with rock stars.

Deb said she met Jimmy Barnes at a Cold Chisel gig, and drove his wife Jane around in her modified yellow Sigma through the streets of St Kilda, her left prosthetic leg in control of the steering wheel, and her right managing the extension pedals.

Travelling the world

Deb's first great travel adventure was an east coast road trip from Melbourne to Queensland on the back of a Yamaha 450cc motorcycle, feet anchored under the thighs of a girlfriend.

When the bike bit the dust, she continued on to Cairns, hitchhiking from truck stop to truck stop with a new friend she had made in Byron Bay.

The free-spirited itinerary would set the fearless tone for further travels.

Across the Nullarbor, she camped, slept in cars, stayed in hostels and "pulled all-nighters" at drinking establishments with strangers who became friends.

In 1985 she embarked on her first solo world backpacking trip, using her bag as a mobile step to mount airline seats, toilets, chairs and buses.

She visited the Bahamas for a disability conference, and joined a bus tour spanning America.

Deb described how blues guitarist Albert Collins jumped off the stage and landed at her feet at a concert under San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

It was one of the highlights of her life.

"It was a big concert and I was standing under the rope, and he just jumped out and landed on one knee and must have been there at my face for five minutes and just playing this massive lead riff," she said.

It was an unforgettable experience, only rivalled by a chance encounter with pop icon Prince in the same city, when after lines of cocaine, she drunkenly stumbled face first into his limousine.

Deb travelled around Europe before heading to the desert sands of North Africa and then staying in a tent on the Greek Island of Paros.

She describes lying in the sun, eating fresh bread and tzatziki on the beach, and being carried to the pub each night on the neck of a fellow Australian man before she returned home.

"I loved it down there," she said.

In search of love

While Deb had no shortage of impromptu, short-term romances during her travelling life, finding lasting love was much harder. 

She would either push men away in fear of being rejected, or men who paid her attention would keep her in the "friend zone" when things were about to become intimate.

Around 1988, she embarked on another road trip through America but it came to an abrupt end when her car broke down in Crescent City, California, forcing her and a friend to take shelter at a local car wreckers. 

It was here where she would meet the love of her life, David.

"We partied hard that night we met and I went home with him and I never left," she said.

"I cooked his food, I washed his clothes while he was working. 

"Before he came home at night I'd be back stoking up the fire for our cedar sauna that he built, so when he'd come home from work we'd jump in the sauna — it was great."

She would live with him in the US for three years, until her desire to become a mother ultimately ended the relationship. 

Not wanting another child of his own, David instead supported Deb to go through an assisted insemination program, which she wouldn't otherwise have been able to access as a disabled person in Australia. 

When Deb became pregnant, she and David agreed to part company. She returned to Australia, and gave birth to her daughter Emma in 1992.

Mum's life

Deb lived with her parents, until her tenant vacated the one-bedroom home she had purchased before her travels.

Managing to feed, nurse and dress Emma herself, she mainly required help when it came to lifting Emma in and out of the bath.

"My younger brother was around all the time, he was the best surrogate dad," Deb said.

"But he died from a heroin overdose when Emma was two-and-a-half, just after I'd built the new home for us all to live in."

Raising Emma would bring the greatest joy and purpose to her life, as she watched her daughter develop into a confident and independent young woman with interests in Scouts and pony club.

Deb maintained her adventurous streak, skydiving out of the odd plane and becoming an outback rally car driver for the Variety Club bash.

A final twist of fate

Deb would often speak to schools and community groups about living with a disability. 

She advocated for genuine change for people living with disabilities, winning awards along the way.

After her daughter left home at 17 to pursue a career as a vet, Deb required more assistance with everyday tasks as her body aged.

By 2019 she needed a wheelchair to get around.

In January 2025, she travelled to Melbourne by train to meet her daughter, soon after launching her book.

She was using the bathroom when a sudden jolt in the carriage caused her to fall and break bones.

From her hospital bed, just weeks before she died, she told the ABC that she was energised and awaiting the birth of her first grandchild.

"I've had a fabulous life as a person with a severe disability," she said, amid answering calls and a flurry of texts with her toes.

"Some of the sh*t I got up to! It was all in the name of rock n' roll."

Within days, a catastrophic blood clot caused Deb to have a stroke. 

She died on Sunday, aged 68, with her pregnant daughter Emma by her side.