'Stoked with life': Lawson living for every moment but dreaming big

Four years ago, after his mates dragged him unconscious from a drain in Bali as his mangled scooter lay smoking nearby, no one knew if he'd even get one.

Now the 22-year-old is fighting to be better and stronger every day through rehab, study, believing that he can, and a little bit of tap dancing.

"I'm feeling great," he said.

"I'm pretty stoked with life, like all the time."

When the Newcastle Herald caught up with Lawson where he does ongoing rehab in Lambton, Engage VR, he lit up the room with his energy as he posed for the camera, demanding bigger weights, shirtless and laughing.

"I try to keep busy at all times," he said.

"I don't really look back, just keep looking forward, like what can I do now, how can I get better, what can I do to get better? I don't look back at all."

But the dramatic night of his scooter crash while on schoolies in Bali in December 2019, the intense mission to bring him home and his epic bounce-back have been well-documented.

"I kind of forget how bad I was," he said.

"I saw a video the other day of how I was in a wheelchair, how I couldn't talk, but I was still happy at that time.

"It just shows your emotions aren't determined by your circumstances - and I've lived that. People have got to learn that."

If superheroes have to overcome the toughest of challenges to earn their power, Lawson's strength is his mindset.

"Everyone wants to be strong ... they don't realise what they have to go through to get to that level," he said.

"They can see the top of the mountain but they can't see the cracks and crevices on the way up there."

Lawson is studying at University of Newcastle to become a chartered accountant, and is going on exchange to South Carolina in the US for a semester in the coming months.

"I've already met some friends over there from the socials ... and I know a local from Newcastle university who's going over there as well," he said.

"It'll be my first time over there, so I'm pretty keen on it."

He is pumped to travel alone, have new experiences, and watch gridiron football games alongside tens of thousands of others in packed-out stands.

Lawson can feel himself getting closer every day to his ultimate goal of running back onto a football field himself. He has a print-out of his face stuck on top of a Knights jersey in his bedroom.

"Yeah, I can see it - I could see it when I was back in a wheelchair," he said.

"If you don't believe you can get there, then you're probably not going to get there."

Lawson has been reading, learning Spanish, and recently dipped his toes into tap dancing.

Lawson and his girlfriend, Tahli McElroy, went to watch her sister in an eisteddfod, and tap dancing struck him as an activity that would be fun and good for his rehab.

"I thought I may as well get some tap dancing shoes and have a bit of fun at home, and I think I'm going pretty well," he said.

"When we went to the tap dancing shop ... they were like what the hell is this six-foot-four man coming in getting tap dancing shoes for, like what size are you?"

He joked that moths had gotten into the box in the year it had spent on a shelf out the back.

When Tahli and Lawson met by a lake in Forster at new year's, it had been just more than four years since Lawson was found - unconscious and partly underwater - in that drain somewhere between Seminyak and Canggu.

His friends desperately pulled him out, gave him CPR, and loved ones and strangers alike rallied around Lawson and his family as they made the big decision to medevac him while he was fighting for life.

He had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and picked up a nasty infection from the drain water in his lungs, but since December 2019, Lawson has wowed doctors and supporters.

He learnt to sit, stand, walk, talk and drive again. Now, he's catching flights, snowboarding, working out, driving and charming his therapists.

"My environment at home - mum and dad - they've played a big role in my rehab and this journey," he said.

"And all of Newcastle as well, with that big GoFundMe, I still think about that a fair bit, I still want to make them proud and do them a good one."

The dramatic story of what happened that night and the captivating, nail-biting journey to medically evacuate him to Australia, was documented in 2022 in a film commissioned by Lawson's family.

Success looks a little bit different to Lawson now, than at 18 years old.

"I think it's being happy with your own life and getting uncomfortable with life's difficulties ... overcoming challenges and being good at losing," he said.

"Most people, 99 per cent of people, would see that this crash was bad for me. But, look at the opportunity I have now."

Read the three-part Newcastle Herald special report by Anita Beaumont, called 'Saving Lawson':