You should ask Kel about his favourite flower.
Not about the scars, or the skin grafts, or what happened to him as a baby though if you did, he might just hit you with one of his signature deadpan one-liners:
“If you could grow anything instead of hair, what would it be?”
“Well obviously, I’d grow fingers, Zaide.”
Kel is a proud Wiradjuri tribe man and a lifelong supporter of the NSW Blues even while living in Queensland, deep in Maroon country. I’ve watched him take ribbing from participants at Let’s Go Support Service with his usual calm, cracking a smile and saying:
“We’ll wait until the final score, then see who’s laughing, mate.”
(NSW went on to smash Queensland 18 - 6 at Lang Park that night.)
When Kel tells you his favourite flower is the Waratah the state flower of “the best state,” as he calls it you start to understand something about him. The Waratah is beautiful, bold, and burns bright red. It’s a survivor, the kind of flower that grows back stronger after heat and destruction.
Kel was held in a bathtub of scalding water as a baby, sustaining third-degree burns to over half his body, and losing several fingers and toes. Since then, he’s undergone countless skin grafts and countless moments where people only saw the burns and not the bloke.
The Waratah Man
101 x 137cm
Oil on canvas, 2025