With thanks to Sydney Morning Herald and files from the Canadian Press

A Manitoba man is in an Australian hospital after he was severely beaten by two teens using a bar ripped from his own wheelchair, local police said.

Heath Proden, 35, was in a Sydney train station Tuesday night when he was approached and insulted by two teenage boys, New South Wales police said. When Proden tried to leave the station through the elevator, he was punched in the face and knocked out of his chair.

The teens then allegedly stomped on him and batted him on the head with a metal bar taken from his wheelchair, which local news reports say caused a depressed skull wound.

The suspects took off with some of Proden's belongings but soon returned to continue their assault, police said.

“It's a cowardly, horrendous, horrific thing that they've done,” Proden's girlfriend, Kristin Sharrock, told the Sydney Morning Herald . “It makes me sick to the stomach to think he came out here for me and he's ended up in a hospital and to think that he could have died.”

The attack was “unprovoked,” Mt. Druitt police Supt. Wayne Cox told local reporters, and lasted three to five minutes. The incident was captured on a security camera. “It's probably one of the most serious attacks that I've seen,” Cox said.

Two Australian teenagers have been charged over a vicious attack on a disabled Canadian tourist who was knocked out of his wheelchair and battered with a metal bar, police said on Thursday.

The two, aged 15 and 16, were both charged with grievous bodily harm and robbery armed with an offensive weapon following Tuesday's incident, which has made headlines in the victim's home country.

Proden, who lives in Mosman and is in Australia on a year-long working visa, was in stable condition in Westmead Hospital. He was returning home from seeing Canadian country act Doc Walker play a concert when he was attacked, reports say.

“He is a wonderful, kind, generous individual,” Sharrock told the Morning Herald . “He's been through a lot in his life and he doesn't deserve what's happened.”

Proden was injured 10 years ago when he broke his back in a snowmobile accident, family said. A month after his injury, his stepfather died in a similar crash.

His mother was in shock after learning of the attack.

“What can a mother say about her son?” she said from the family's home in Winnipeg. “He's my everything.”