He’s marooned on a desert island looking for love, but Chad Everard is used to dealing with unusual situations.
Now 47, the Stranded
on Honeymoon Island star was just 11 years old when he was thrown into a co-parenting role.
His baby sister, Maddison, was
born with brain damage, and Chad stepped in to
help share the load with his single mum, Jen.
“My sister is dependent. She’s incontinent and doesn’t communicate like a normal person… we’re constantly managing her,” he exclusively told New Idea.
Growing up quickly
Chad, who is partnered with Georgia on the tv show, said he and Jen, 73, figured out how they could work together as a team
to raise Maddison, now 36.
“As a youngster, you just deal with it. Mum went through the depression of having a special needs child and I supported her through that,” he said.
He was changing
nappies and dressing
his sister before he was in high school.
“As we got older and mum needed to go back to work because we needed obviously to pay bills and put food on the table. I would wait with my sister and take her to school, put her on the bus, and then wait at home after I got home from school to get her off the bus and look after her for when mum then came home from work,” he said.
“You have to make sure that her body temperature is fine, otherwise you either add clothes or take clothes away. You’ve got to check in and make sure that she’s not thirsty or that she’s not hungry and so on,” he added.
Although he was busy looking after his sister, his mum always encouraged him to do the best he could at school.
“Mum was always very passionate that I was a studious student. You know, you go through your teenage growing pains, I think you wanna rebel and you want to be one of the cool kids… but she’s like, ‘you must study, you must do your year 11 and 12, and you must go to university’,” he recalled, adding “I didn’t become rebellious to my mum… in terms of whatever my mum asked me to do, I would always do it”.
Chad went on to study nursing at university and is now an arthroplasty expert.
To this day, Chad still puts family first, and and he would love to “acknowledge all mums out there, hardest job in the world! Even more so for a single mum and devastatingly so for a single mum with a special needs child”.
A special bond
Jen and Maddison live just down the road from him in Melbourne, and he visits them at least once a day.
But he does admit that his family situation has caused problems in relationships in the past.
“It becomes quite stressful and exhausting, and in the end I’m just like, ‘this is too hard’… and then we usually
part ways,” he explains.
He is also aware that in the future he will be taking over Maddison’s full-time care.
“It’s hard to burden someone else with this
level of responsibility and duty,” he said.
Hopefully he’s found the one in Georgia!
Where can I watch Stranded on Honeymoon Island?
Catch Stranded on Honeymoon Island Monday and Tuesday on Seven and 7Plus.
