E llie Cole greets Vogue Australia with a warm laugh. The advocate and athlete is personable and sharp-witted, with a keen sense of humour. Case in point, one of her first memories at swim camp in 2006. “I was 14 years old and a lot of my para swimming friends and I thought it would be really funny to just leave a whole bunch of legs in the elevator and send it up to a higher floor,” she says. “We sat there and waited for the elevator to come back and this old couple stepped out …”
Pranks, she says, were par for the course. “I suppose I've always been quite humoured by disability because I've grown up with a lot of people who have one,” she reflects. “I didn't realise how offended able-bodied people would get if you make jokes about disability. It wasn't a coping strategy,
