INSIDE THE WORLD OF AN AUSSIE STUNT DOUBLE

FROM FIGHTING HUGH JACKMAN TO SURVIVING THE AUSSIE OUTBACK, KY'S LIFE IS FULL OF ADVENTURE

- Emma Levett

Ky Furneaux fractured her spine in a terrifying car accident at just 19 years old. Her doctors weren't hopeful about her recovery and, as she lay on her back immobile for three months, her future was looking bleak.

“I was told I'd never be physically active again. I wouldn't play tennis or netball and I might never be able to carry a baby,” Ky, now 48, tells New Idea. “But my parents always said that the way to make me do something was to tell me I couldn't. I wanted to show the doctor what my body was capable of.”

Over the next three years grew up in Adelaide, started rock climbing, tentatively pushing herself further and harder.

“I started realising how wrong the diagnosis was," Ky, who she says.

Ky got a job teaching kids to kayak, climb and hike. It was a throwaway line from a boy that was to shape the next two decades of her life.

“We were rolling down a sand dune and he said: 'You should be a stunt woman,” Ky says. "I wish I could remember who that kid was because after that, it's what I became."

Ky moved to Vancouver where she says she “got lucky" because she was one of only a handful of female stunt women. After training in martial arts for three years, she was also the only one who could fight.