Career
Eames was raised in the Sydney suburb of Kingsgrove. At the age of five, she fell off a slide and damaged a bone in her left wrist while holidaying in Batemans Bay. Her left arm was plastered, but it developed gas gangrene and had to be amputated a few weeks later.
When she began swimming soon after the accident, she was only taught sidestroke because her swimming teachers thought that it was the only stroke that could be performed by a person with one arm.
However, she met a swimming teacher with one arm in North Ryde who showed her how to swim the other strokes by example. She entered school competitions with her able-bodied peers, then progressed to district competitions, where she was constantly disqualified from breaststroke and butterfly races because she did not finish with two hands.
In 1985, at the age of 20, she was working as an accounting machine operator for the New South Wales state government. She played an active role in the New South Wales Amputee Sports Association, often serving as their spokesperson.
She died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 36.
Eames began competitive swimming at the age of 14.
