Waves beneath her wings

Sam Bloom, a competitive adaptive surfer who won two World Para Surfing Championships, tells DH about how a baby magpie pushed her to take the flight of endless hope

Samantha Bloom grew up on the lap of the ocean. Afternoons were spent in the waters — surfing. Married to professional photographer Cameron Bloom, and mother of Rueben, Noah and Oliver, Sam lives on Sydney’s northern beaches. With Cameron, she travelled to the remotest of places. Life was one big adventure.

2013 changed it all. An accident, during a family vacation in Thailand, left her paralysed below the chest.

But the surfer had ridden tall waves and somewhere, she felt the ocean would heal her. Two weeks after she came home from the rehab, she started kayaking.

Her indomitable spirit, family and friends, and a baby magpie pushed her to take to the oars.

Sam Bloom on becoming World Adaptive Surf Champion 2018,
La Jolla, San Diego. PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANT, ISA

Sam now holds two national kayaking titles. As a competitive adaptive surfer, she has also won two World Para Surfing Championships.

“I wanted to be a nurse and work in Africa. I became a nurse when I finished Uni, that’s when Cam and I started travelling,’’ she retraces her path.

Recollecting the fateful vacation, Sam says, “Initially the plan was to take the kids to Ethiopia. We were planning to fly to Cairo and then to Addis Ababa. But there was political unrest in Cairo.”

As fate would have it, they chose Thailand.

“We found an isolated hotel right on the beach surrounded by palm trees. We spent one night there and the next morning decided to go swimming. That morning on the beach I remember thinking, ‘life doesn’t get much better than this’. That’s when one of the kids spotted the stairs that went up to the roof.

“We decided to go up and look out at the island. I must have leaned against the railing which had dry rot, and that’s when I fell six metres onto the concrete ground, broke my back, and sustained injuries. There were fractures in my skull and I had lost a lot of blood. I was lucky to be alive,” Sam says.

“As far as I was concerned, my life was over. I thought ‘I am never travelling again’, ‘I can’t play soccer or surf’. I’d say the real me died in Thailand.”

Sam Bloom and actress Naomi Watts, who played Sam’s character
in ‘Penguin Bloom’, at their first meeting in Sydney

Back in Sydney, she went into rehabilitation. “In the first year, I was miserable. When I was in the rehab, I used to complain, ‘I can’t do anything’, and then, one day, I said, ‘maybe I could kayak’.

Two weeks after Sam got home, she started kayaking. “That was my favourite part of the day. I was not in the wheelchair but in the water. That was key to my mental health,” she says.

“I am quite determined and competitive with myself, and I’m lucky I had amazing support from my kayak coach Gaye and trainer Mandy.”

Life was tough for the family. “It was hard for the boys. Noah was really angry, for a while. He used to feel guilty as he knew how much I loved surfing. The first summer after the accident, he said ‘mum I am going to surf’. And he’d look at me and say ‘I’m sorry mum’. That would make me feel like a terrible mum. I used to tell him to go get a perfect wave and that made him happy. Cam was looking after the kids and me and working. He never got angry,” Sam smiles.

Three months later, Noah found a baby black and white magpie that had fallen off the nest. She couldn’t fly or feed herself. The family brought her home and named her ‘Penguin’. “I spent so much time with her as I was stuck at home. I used to talk to her and she was always on me. We spent all day, every day, together,’’ Sam said.

As the magpie learned to fly, so did Sam — she kayaked and surfed more.

'Penguin', the magpie, and Sam's son Oli. Photos by Cameron Bloom

It was an Instagram post that took Sam’s story across the world. “Cam is always taking photographs, so we started an Instagram account called @penguinthemagpie. A journalist wrote a story on it. After that, publishers contacted Cam saying they wanted to do a book on the family. Cam got in touch with author Bradley Trevor Greive who came up with the idea of using ‘Penguin’ as a vessel to tell my story,” she recollects.

The family’s story is now a movie — Penguin Bloom — with Naomi Watts playing Sam, based on the book of the same name Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved A Family by Bradley Trevor Greive and Cameron Bloom. “Naomi wanted me on set to make sure she got everything right,” recollects Sam.

Sam has been receiving messages from all over the world. To her, that is the best part.

As she gets set to drive back home from the gym, Sam adds, “We are a lot braver than what we think when we are facing challenges. I want to go back to the world championships. I want to become a three-time world champion”.