ANZAC Day 2026 — A Personal Reflection from Paul, Veteran

This isn't a promotional post. It's a personal one. If you'll give me a few minutes of your time this ANZAC Day, I'd like to share something that matters to me.

— Paul Gehan, Founder, My Tesla Accessories

It Started in Stawell

I grew up in Stawell, a small country town in regional Victoria. In small towns, you don't always have a grand plan — you just follow your mates.

One day, my best mate Greg Wilson was heading to the employment office for his Army induction. I wandered along for company, as you do in a small country town. A recruiting Corporal ushered me in. Three months later, Greg and I were both in the Army.

That accidental decision shaped the next 18 years of my life.

Greg was killed in a car accident at 23. He never got to see what the Army made of us both. I think about him every ANZAC Day. This one's for you, mate. 🎖️

Eighteen Years of Service

I served in the Australian Army for 18 years — Catering Corps, Physical Training Instructor. I deployed on active service to Malaysia and East Timor. Those postings stay with you. The people you serve alongside, the places you see, the things you carry home that you never quite put down.

A soldier from a small country town — doing all of the above.

ANZAC Cove — A Sign on a London Street

In 1998, during my European cycling adventure, I found myself staying with a friend from school in their London flat. One morning I walked out onto the street and saw a sign — a guided tour to Turkey for ANZAC Day.

For a serving Australian soldier, it was a no-brainer. Something I hadn't even thought to plan, but the moment I saw it, I knew. Two days later I was on my way.

Standing at ANZAC Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula as a soldier — looking out over that water, standing on that ground, understanding in a way you simply can't from a textbook what those men faced and what they gave — is something that will stay with me until my last breath. It's a place that changes you. I'm grateful every day that a sign on a London street put me there.

How I Spend ANZAC Day

Every year I'm at my local RSL for the dawn service. If old Army mates are around, we catch up — there's something irreplaceable about being with people who just get it without needing to explain anything. Then it's a day of quiet reflection.

And yes — I watch Collingwood in the ANZAC Day clash. Some traditions are sacred. ⚫⚪

A Life Built on Endurance

Endurance sport was central to who I was as a soldier and as a person. In 1995 and 1996 I completed Ironman triathlons — 3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42km full marathon. I knew what my body was capable of and I pushed it willingly.

In 1998 I embarked on what became one of the great adventures of my life — a 5,000km cycling journey around Western Europe. My only fixed plan before departure was to ride Lands End to John O'Groats, the length of Britain from the very bottom to the very top. Everything else was ad lib.

I wanted to catch the start of the Tour de France in Dublin that year, and I had one hard deadline: reach Paris for the finish three weeks later. Everything in between was whatever the road offered.

And the road offered everything.

I slept in hostels, on pub floors, in barns, in caravan annexes in Germany, and on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland with the Atlantic crashing below. I was taken into strangers' homes and properties — front yards, farms, spare rooms — by people who saw a bloke on a bike and simply opened their door.

On the wet roads of Ireland I had a bike accident — found on the side of the road, taken in by a local family, and looked after for a week while I recovered. They guided me to the local bike shop where I learned how to do my own repairs, straightened my trusted steed back into shape, and got back on the road. Because that's what you do.

In Germany, while trying to find a quiet spot to camp in the forest, I was discovered by a group of scouts who took me in for the night. The stories from that trip are endless — and every one of them is about strangers showing extraordinary kindness to a young Australian soldier on a bike, far from home.

From Ireland I rode through Scotland, England, then across to France — through the northern battlefields. The Somme. Fromelles. Villers-Bretonneux. Riding as a serving Australian soldier through those fields, past graves that stretch further than you can see, through towns that owe their freedom to men who never came home — is something I will carry with me forever. You feel the weight of it differently when you've worn a uniform.

From Paris I continued through Belgium, Germany, Prague, Oktoberfest, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, back to the UK, and then on to the USA and Canada. An adventure that shaped me as much as anything I did in uniform.

27 August 2002 — The Ride to Gallipoli Barracks

I was training for the Australian Army triathlon team. On the morning of 27 August 2002, I had permission to miss the regular PT session and instead headed out for a 40km ride before work, making my way back to Gallipoli Barracks in Enoggera — where I was posted at the time.

There's something quietly significant about that detail I've never forgotten. I was riding to Gallipoli. A place named for one of the most defining moments in Australian military history. I didn't make it back the same person.

The bike accident left me with a spinal injury and incomplete tetraplegia. I spent four months in the Princess Alexandra Hospital Spinal Care Unit in Brisbane, relearning everything — walking, eating, moving, fine motor skills, talking. Every basic human function had to be rebuilt from scratch.

Incomplete tetraplegia means the spinal cord is damaged but not fully severed. The difference between an incomplete and complete spinal injury is the difference between where I am now and spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. For me, that difference was 2 to 4 millimetres.

I am grateful every single day.

The Long Road Back

In May 2003 I was medically discharged from the Army after 18 years of service. The career I had built, the identity I had worn — gone.

From 2004 to 2018 I worked as a personal trainer — something the Army had directed me toward and I'd never questioned. It gave me purpose and kept me moving. But by 2018, the physical toll of the injury had caught up with me. I could no longer stand for the hours personal training demands. That career was over too.

From 2018 to December 2022 I wasn't working. Those were the hardest years. Living with PTSD from the accident, the anxiety of feeling vulnerable in public — the unsteadiness, the fear of being judged, the quiet worry about how the world sees you when you're not the picture of strength you once were. I underwent 18 months of counselling and fought an ongoing battle with the Department of Veterans' Affairs for the compensation I was entitled to.

I won't pretend it was easy. It wasn't. But it made me who I am.

January 2023 — Ten Products and a Decision

In January 2023 I saw an opportunity. A small Tesla accessories store — ten products — was available to buy. I took it.

Not just because I needed income. Because I wanted to teach my son about business — to show him what it looks like to build something from scratch, to be the role model I wanted to be for him. My dad did the best he could with what he knew. I understand that now.

But I wanted my son to see his dad get back up, build something real, and show up every day regardless of what life had thrown at him.

That's why My Tesla Accessories exists.

Three years on, it's grown from 10 products into a genuine Australian business with over 90 products — built from home, on my terms, at my pace.

Today it's about learning everything I can about AI and ecommerce, meeting remarkable people, and sharing stories along the way.

It's not the life I planned.

But it is the one I have and the one I believe I was meant to have.

What ANZAC Day Means to Me Now

ANZAC Day has always meant something to me. But it means something different now than it did when I was 20 years old marching in uniform.

It's about resilience. About showing up when it's hard. About the people who gave everything so we could have the freedom to build lives, businesses, families — whatever we choose.

It's about Greg Wilson, who never got the chance.

It's about the men whose graves I rode past in the Somme and at Fromelles — young Australians who gave everything on foreign soil so the rest of us could come home.

And it's about the quiet battles that don't make the news — the ones fought every day by veterans and everyday Australians dealing with injury, mental health, and the challenge of finding their place in a world that doesn't always make room for vulnerability.

If you're fighting one of those battles today — I see you. You're not alone.

Lest We Forget

To every Australian who has served, to every family who has waited, and to every person carrying something heavy today — thank you. And lest we forget.

Full Circle

When I reflect on it all, I see a young man who became a soldier almost by accident — just like so many of those who went before him.

The ANZACs of 1915 didn't sign up with a detailed plan either.

They were young men from small towns and big dreams, drawn by a sense of adventure, duty, and mateship — with no real idea of what lay ahead.

I was no different.

A boy from Stawell who wandered into a recruiting office, found himself competing in Ironman triathlons, deploying to Malaysia and East Timor, cycling 5,000km across Europe without a map or a plan, standing at ANZAC Cove, riding through the battlefields of the Somme, and training for the Army triathlon team — all driven by that same restless hunger for challenge, for experience, for life lived fully.

Like the soldiers who returned from Gallipoli and the Western Front forever changed by what they had seen and endured, my own journey — the adventures, the injury, the long years of recovery, the battles fought quietly and alone — has shaped every part of who I am today.

The good and the hard. The triumphs and the losses. All of it.

That young man from Stawell had no idea where the road would take him.

He still doesn't. But he keeps riding and learning with the experience of life.

That, to me, is the ANZAC spirit.

— Paul Gehan
18-year Australian Army Veteran | East Timor and Malaysia
Founder, My Tesla Accessories
Brisbane, Australia