"There were tears and just to give her a good cuddle ... it's an unbelievable feeling," Don Terry smiles. "I wouldn't say she said much, but it just blew her away. And I'm still taller than her when she takes her boots off!"

The footwear of choice for Terry's daughter, Laura-Kate, is not really boots. She has long since mastered the ballet shoe, a far cry from the days when she was an ankle biter snapping at her father's heels.

That was the last time Terry, a former bush jockey who was rendered a paraplegic after a horrific fall during the Grafton winter carnival almost two decades ago, walked. His son Kyle was barely in primary school. In his own words, he "died on the track". Skull, ribs, lungs – he fractured or punctured them all. Spent eight days in a coma, too.

And ever since? He has just wanted to stand upright again. Just to see eye to eye with those that matter most.

"Hope is a good word ... and hope can be a bad word," Terry shrugs. "You always hope something is around the corner. You hope stem cell and everything associated with that is going to happen, but you get disappointed a lot.

"Five years after my accident they were talking about stem cell so I kept up my physio really hard hoping something would happen, but 18 years down the track it hasn't got any further. It will happen one day, but whether it's going to be too late for me [I don't know]."

Stem-cell developments might stall, but technology never stands still. Through a chance meeting with a policeman from neighbouring Ballina on NSW's far north coast, Terry is learning to walk all over again.

He stresses his body hasn't regenerated to the point where he can walk unassisted. But does it really matter?

In a month where Terry celebrated his biggest success in the saddle on Welsh Miner in the old Civic Handicap way back in 1993, where racing celebrates its fallen and stricken through the National Jockeys Trust day and where the Grafton carnival is the focal point in NSW racing, it is poignant Terry would have his breakthrough at this time.

The robotic legs he is being taught to master at a Gold Coast rehabilitation centre cost $80,000 to $100,000 to buy. Terry, who has started making the short trip from his home town of Lennox Head to trial the robotic legs, wants a few more barrier trials first before mulling the option to race permanently with them.

Measured and fitted up for the legs, which receive signals from a computerised backpack which determines how far each stride should be, Terry made it through a couple of hundred metres on his first session. About half-an-hour of walking on the next.

It is the same centre where former Newcastle Knight Alex McKinnon – "that was a very touching story which brought tears to my eyes and I was very emotional" – has been visiting.

Terry's biggest impediment so far has been something which used to come so naturally.

"The more you do it the better you get at it, but the biggest problem is the balance," he says. "But it was unbelievable. To be able to be upright and look people in the eye [was amazing]."

Looking over the steering wheel – of car or boat, emblazoned with the name "The Duck" down the starboard side in reference to the "Donald Duck" nickname which stuck while riding – has never been a problem. Just don't ask to sit in the front seat. That is where "the girlfriend" rests, a reference for Terry's wheelchair so quickly dismantled and chucked in the passenger seat he is out the driveway before your seatbelt is even buckled up.

Driving is easy. There is a modified hand lever he uses as an accelerator and brake and able-bodied folk menacingly wander about on the roads as this local cops gags from the beach folk at Lennox Head, a town on high alarm for shark spottings in the past fortnight. The strides Terry has made recently have put a smile back on a few faces.

"You go to the races one day and you're walking, the next day you're at Brisbane Hospital in a helicopter," Terry says. "Next week is the 18th anniversary [of the fall] on the 16th July. It does get emotional at times, but you're not human if you're not. You get angry, but you don't get bitter. If you do it might be for a little bit, but you're quickly over it.

"There was another jockey that caused my fall, but we know what can happen out there. I saw him a couple of years later at Grafton and he was a wreck. He came up to me crying saying he was so sorry. He was just shattered and he's probably never been the same since, but that's racing."

That's racing. How you would love a dollar for every time you heard the expression. Back a horse held up for a run and a certainty beaten? That's racing. Jockey drops the whip and gets beaten in a photo? That's racing. Hoop returns to scale and weighs in heavy? That's racing. Everything that seems to go wrong in the sport? That's racing.

But it is also about gathering around those in the time of need. That's racing, too.

"I cannot fault Racing NSW and the [Australian] Jockeys Association," Terry says. "Right from day one of my accident ... they were unbelievable. You hear of a lot of places trying to shirk their responsibility, but Racing NSW and Peter V'landys ... they bent over backwards to help me."

Terry's house at Lennox Head was specifically designed and built to accommodate the extra space he would need to wheel around. The doors and hallways are slightly bigger. There are ramps as well. But as Terry points out, any prospective buyer would do well to notice the modifications.

It took five years for Terry to finally have his body "settle down" after his accident. The bladder and bowel problems which often accompany paraplegics are more of a thing of the past.

After a relatively short career of 14 years riding – a small timespan given how long jockeys can persevere in the saddle these days – Terry has been making a career off the track ever since.

He has managed several Queensland and northern NSW-based riders in the past when they've visited tracks on the northern rivers, but reckoned it has got in the way of his other love.

"It interferes with the fishing trips," he laughs. "I'll always scrape up someone to go out catching some mackerel or snapper."

There is another trip with a little more importance on the horizon now. It is to see Laura-Kate, who is off to dance in Germany soon. Terry wants to be there to witness it first-hand.

How do you know he will make it? He will be the one feeling 10-foot tall in the front row, hopefully standing up to look everyone around him in the eye. And telling him that's his girl on stage.