Every story has a beginning

Hello, my name is Rhys.
And I am the blind baker from Toowoomba Cookies.

I was born and bred in New Zealand, but was born very premature, and my parents were told by the doctors that I "might not make it".


But I did!


I'm sitting on the chair right next to my wife, who is helping me write my story.


As a young child I also had meningitis, which is the cause of me losing my sight.
I have had so many operations, I don't know all the details of.
I don't know when they happened or why I needed them! I would like to find out one day.


My koro thinks I am very brave for having all the operations I did, and when he needed to have a surgery he thought "if Rhys can do it, I can too!"

My aunty told me that I needed to get rushed to hospital after having a migraine one day.


I know that I have had two 'shunts' which my wife says are to drain fluid from around my brain. The scars are behind my ears. My shunt really hurts if I get a migraine. Pain killers don't even help take the pain away.


My nan and koro looked after me until my parents came back from Canada. I love my grandparents, but I miss my koro. I remember seeing him when he was very sick, then he passed away when I was eight or nine.


I love all my family. I have my Mum, Dad, siblings, heaps of aunties, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, "the works"... and now I am getting to know my wife's family as well!


I have three sisters and two brothers, but mostly I lived with my brothers and two sisters.


I did my schooling at Dominion Road Primary, Mount Roskill Intermediate, and Mount Roskill Grammar in Auckland.


I found mainstream schooling hard.


I couldn't keep up. I had to get special work sent up from Wellington. I got different work from everyone else. That's how I started reading audio books (on tape!)... I remember hearing the phrase "when you hear this sound, turn the page"... 'DING'.


I enjoyed the tapes... Listening to the stories, pointing to the words with my finger.


When I moved to Mount Roskill Intermediate I was in PDU (physically disabled unit).


I made friends and still keep in contact with some of them. I visited my school last time I was in Auckland, and the teachers all remembered me, and got to eat some of my cookies for afternoon tea!


I learned how to cook noodles with prawns, shrimp, and frozen veggies with help from my Occupational Therapist. That was my lunch for the day!


My wife thinks I make the best noodles, even better than she does (they come out really fluffy and flavoursome, and she likes that I put veggies in it).


I used to play drums for the school band. We performed a production in the school hall one night. Parents and children came to watch. I wasn't scared. We even got recorded for a CD version of our production.


I think I gave mine to my uncle.


Who knew I would grow up to be a baker? (not a chef)
Some people don't have patience to bake. I do.
I love baking.
I enjoy what I do for Toowoomba Cookies.
I just wish my wife would be a bit more patient with me when I am trying to measure the cups of flour or sugar! It's hard on my eyes to see the colours on the glass measuring jug.



I told my wife that I would make our dinner tonight, so I better go do that, or there will be nothing to eat !!