Canberra's Melanie Stamell is not your average adrenalin junkie.
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The 35-year-old has pretty much tried it all: kayaking, climbing, skiing, caving and mountain biking. But it's her small stature which provides the real obstacle.
Stamell has dwarfism which means when it comes to sporting equipment she has had to make a lot of it herself, including a fibreglass kayak.
"When I was Googling I couldn't find any kayaks that were small enough and people couldn't even give me advice on where to get them so I ended up making myself a kayak out of fibreglass, " she says.
"I'm a hack - my stuff doesn't look good close up - but it works which I'm happy about.
"And I have to consider things like safety because these sports can be quite dangerous and the things that I'm doing could trip you up in a way, so I was always really nervous when first using the equipment."
When it came to her personal flotation device (PFD), Stamell had to order it from overseas because she couldn't find an Australian distributor with a child-sized PFD which still supported the weight of an adult, and allowed her to freely move while whitewater kayaking.
As for her wetsuit, Stamell had to make her own from scratch so that she could go kayaking in the cold weather.
"I think people don't realise how much of their quality of life is afforded by technology and equipment that they're not even aware of," she says.
"When you don't have access to it ... you live in a different world.
"Equipment is almost like the air you breathe, so you don't realise that it's a thing so you don't realise how much it affects what you do."
Stamell's story is told in the short film Mel and will be just one showcased in the upcoming Gutsy Girls Adventure Film Festival.
The three-hour session showcases other adventurous women including Samantha Gash on her quest to run across India, big wave surfing champion Paige Alms, rock climber Hazel Findlay, and a crew of Alaskan fat tyre snow bikers.
"Adventure sport film festivals have historically had a lot of white male 20-somethings in them, and there's no shortage of women out there doing great stuff but there was a shortage of women on screen ... and I just felt like those stories weren't getting told," festival director Jemima Robinson says.
"There were so many women like me in the outdoor community doing great stuff that would love to see these stories and you know, you can't be what you can't see.
"So we're showcasing to the women themselves, that no matter if their young or old they can still get out there and do stuff."
- Gutsy Girls Adventure Film Tour will be at the National Film and Sound Archive on August 17. For tickets go to gutsygirlsadventurefilmtour.com.au.