I was born in a Bournemouth, England and I emigrated with my mum and dad and 2 of my sisters as 10-pound poms. We sailed into Sydney Harbour as the Sydney Opera House was being built. We jumped on a bus and headed to Northern Brisbane where we landed at Wacol, which was where all the immigrants stayed until they became established. Mum and Dad saved enough money after about 3-4 months to buy a house. We lived in that house for 12 months and then dad had an epiphany to sell the house, buy a caravan and see what Australia had to offer. I was about 9 years old, and we did this for about 5 years. We were essentially nomadic until I was the age of 14.

We eventually settled in the Wynnum area around Brisbane, and I lived here until I joined the army. As long as I could remember I wanted to be a nurse. I was 15 years old when I endured a horrible shaming from a maths teacher, and I went home and asked my dad if I could leave school. My dad said I could as long as I had a job. So, I got a job at McDonalds. This was halfway through Year 10.

I got sick of cooking french fries pretty quickly, so I got a job as a waitress and kitchen hand at the Wynnum RSL and that is where I met my best friend, Dora. I enjoyed working with food and my connection with Dora made going to work easy. We had a lot of fun together. I worked here for 3 years until I became unemployed. I joined the Army Reserves and applied for many jobs. After an argument with my dad, I went to the city with a heap of resumes and during this process I walked past the Department of Defence and thought, “why not”. So, I walked in and signed up. I think this was about November 1985. Then I had to go home and tell my dad what I had just done.

I joined the army in 1986 in Brisbane and started recruit training. This was at Kapooka, outside of Wagga. I was part of the 3rd womens platoon to train at the same facility as men and there were approximately 150 females and about 450 or 500 men. After the initial 3 months I was given dental as my corp training. It was interesting learning this facet of health and the varied dental hygiene practices of men and women who came through. This was for 12 weeks in Portsea. 

I remember during the middle of winter it was freezing, bitterly cold. The women’s uniform was thinner than the men’s. We wore 2 pairs of tights, a thermal and a shirt and you prayed your legs moved when they called for you to come to attention. From Portsea I was given my posting to the Dental Corp at Randwick. After 18 months I applied for a core transfer to the Nursing Corp. I was accepted but I didn’t find that out until after I had met my late husband, Jason. Jason had originally signed up to get into to Transport Corp when he started there, but as he was colourblind they wouldn’t let him stay in Transport, so he got moved to the Catering Corp. I moved down to Portsea and completed my nursing training. I was moved to Sydney, the 2nd military hospital at Ingleburn; at the time on the outskirts of Sydney. After this I moved back to Randwick; and I stayed here for my whole career.

Jason had finished his 3 years and decided he didn’t want to stay anymore. He asked me if I could get a posting to SA, closer to Cummins. I couldn’t get a posting to Adelaide. At the same time Jason left the army and returned to Cummins where he worked alongside his brothers at the Cummins Meat store. I let my superiors know that if they couldn’t transfer me then I would put in my discharge papers. I was sent to Adelaide for my discharge week.  Prior to my discharge week I got to have a week holiday and flew to Adelaide. At the airport they pointed to the plane I was going to fly to Cummins in. It was so small and I got so anxious I literally got diarrhoea and had to keep going to the toilet. The pilot made me sit up the front with him. The flightended up being ok, for July. It was dark by the time we landed. As we flew into Cummins the pilot said if you look down you will see the lights of Cummins. I looked out the window and down to see not very many lights. I was so thankful to touch down safely.

 Jason met me and he said, “I will take you down the main street of Cummins”. I felt like I blinked and missed it. I met his mum and dad in person for the first time on this visit. Jason proposed to me at midnight at a Christmas Eve party 1990 and we were married 18th April 1992. In January 1993 we bought the house I still live in; it was 30 years this year. During this time, Jason was working at Carr Seeds, and I was nursing at the Tumby Bay Hospital. Our first child, Emily was born February 1996 and Mitchell May 1999.

Emily and Mitchell both did their schooling here. Emily started Year 12 but didn’t finish as she started a full time hair dressing apprenticeship and Mitchell started an apprenticeship in cabinetry. He stayed with it for about 12 months, then left there to work at the airport. Not long after he started his apprenticeship at the Cummins Bakery. He is about to start his fourth year in his apprenticeship. 

 Jason was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in early 2008. His treatment included immunotherapy and radiotherapy and he was declared cancer free in October 2008. He was working at the Railways doing the rail line up from Port Lincoln to Kimba when he was diagnosed. He had a great, understanding boss, they were amazing to him during this time. Life was pretty good until I had my heart attack in 2011. I was lying in bed and had some pain between my shoulder blades. I got up and took 2 Panadol and went back to bed, and I said a prayer. Jason was asleep at the time, and I didn’t want to wake him up. I did end up going to the doctor and getting it checked out.

 We had been saving and decided to take the kids to Surfer’s Paradise in October 2011. We took the kids to Sea World, Movie World and Wet’n’Wild. We tried hard not to say ‘no’ to the kids! It was an amazing family experience; we had the best time and have so many fond memories of this trip. After our fun family holiday to Surfer’s Paradise, we settled back into everyday life. And life was going well, Jason was enjoying his work at the Correctional Services facility; until he noticed a lump under his armpit. He was sitting in the lounge room at home one day when he felt a lump. He started to cry and then proceeded to make an appointment to see the doctor. At the appointment he asked for an ultrasound. The radiographer didn’t have to take a biopsy. He knew it was cancer. We were referred on to an Oncologist in Adelaide and he had the swollen lymph node removed in Port Lincoln the following week.

A week after it was removed, he was called back to the surgery by the surgeon in Port Lincoln. I had a gut feeling something wasn’t right. The surgeon said he had good news and bad news. “The good news is you don’t have Hodgkin lymphoma. Bad news is you have metastatic melanoma”. As soon as I heard I put my head down. I was gutted by this news. I was thinking, “What are we going to tell the kids?” We hadn’t told the kids anything yet. Jason responded, “Is that bad?” The doctor explained there was a low survival rate. Then we realised Jason’s mum was sitting in the car downstairs waiting for us. We didn’t want to tell Georgina straight away, so we went to Jason’s sister’s house and told his sister and mum together. We ended up all crying together. It felt like, “Oh god, here we go again.” In the September he had all the left side lymph nodes removed. All the lymph removed were cancer free and all his scans after this operation showed no evidence of melanoma, but unfortunately, they did show he had Hodgkin lymphoma in his chest.On Jason’s bucket list was seeing Test cricket and during this time there was some kind generosity shown from locals and Jason was able to see a Test match. Jason and Mitchell went and watched Australia v England in December 2013. He had the best time. When he got home from Adelaide, he said, “what do you think about this is?” He was pointing to a small lump under the skin on this chest and under his left arm. He got them removed shortly after and they came back as metastatic melanoma. His oncologist for his Hodgkin lymphoma rang and once he knew about the new Metastatic Melanoma, he couldn’t have the bone marrow transplant. We couldn’t get in to the see the Metastatic Oncologist until Feb 2014. On this trip we saw the surgeon and Bruce Springsteen!

About mid-March and after more scans, he was told he had metastatic melanoma’s throughout his whole body, a tumour in his left lung and multiple tumours throughout his body. Between muscles and between muscles and skin. We could actually see some growing. I asked about the head scan results and they showed that Jason had 3 tumours in his brain and that’s when the world stopped. We had a fight ahead.

Treatment included radiotherapy on his brain tumours and then immunotherapy. Jason was lucky enough to get on a fairly new drug. Before Easter he had a week of radiotherapy, and the kids spent this time with him. We went to Smoky Bay for Easter in 2014 as this was one of Jason’s favourite places to go. It was awesome. And that’s when we discovered his hair was falling out. Emily shaved his head when we got home, and she was devastated his hair had started falling out.

Another thing on his bucket list was to play a footy match with Mitchell. Somehow, through friends, there was a ‘slow down’ game organised with and against Ramblers. His nephews, Isaac, Todd and Jed played also. The clubs put on a trading table to raise money and an auction was held at Rambler’s clubrooms afterwards and we received the proceeds. It was amazing what the community did for us. The generosity of the community was humbling. It enabled me to take time off work to become his carer. This was different to his earlier stint of cancer in 2008 where he did all the appointments on his own. This time I said, “I am coming with you and I will be with you on this journey”. After the slow down he had lost a lot of weight however he remained positive throughout the cancer. He had this sign about cancer and hope. I hated that sign and threw it out the day after he passed.

At the end of May he started losing his balance. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t complaining though. We talked to the oncologist, and he had another CT scan. On the way home his phone kept ringing. It turned out he had a large amount of fluid on his brain, so the plan was to go over to Adelaide Friday to have a shunt put in and drain it out. Just before they did the operation, the doctor came in and said he couldn’t put it in. He had a tumour in his Thalamus, and it needed to be removed. If it wasn’t done, then he roughly had 2 weeks to live.

Not long after this, one of my nurse friends came around to catch up. During this time, she had gone around to all my colleagues at the hospital and collected donations. She handed me $2500 in an envelope. I was so humbled. This was hard earned money of my colleagues to help our family. This is why I didn’t want to leave Cummins after Jason died. The community had been so good to me and my family. It was an awful time, but people were incredibly kind. He had his surgery and pulled through, 12 days later we came home on the bus as he had an air pocket in his head and couldn’t fly.

The treatment was not touching the tumours in Jason’s brain. At the beginning of December 2014, we went over for the cricket, it was India v Australia, and a couple of appointments. The oncologist said they couldn’t treat him anymore. The neurosurgeon said his time was limited. He was told a few months maximum. We put a message on Facebook inviting friends to come and visit. Sit in the shed and have a beer and/or a coffee. It gave me a bit of a break at times. Jason got to connect with friends before he got too unwell to have visitors.

We organised a Barnes family Christmas that year and a New Year’s Eve party with his friends. Unfortunately, my dad died in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, 12 days before Jason died. It was a really tough time. By New Year’s Eve, Jason had a walking stick and needed someone to assist him to move around. We had a great night though. He saw midnight out and went to bed shortly after. He went downhill quite rapidly after that.

We had lots of conversations, and he didn’t want to die at home, he felt that wasn’t fair on me or the kids and he wanted to go to hospital. He had lost the use of the right side of his body and eyesight. When the time came, he couldn’t speak to tell us he wanted to go to hospital. I was sitting talking to him and his breathing changed, and I called the kids in. Mitchell wouldn’t come in, but Emily did. I lied down next to him and kept saying, “thank you, I love you”, over and over. I told him my voice would be the last thing he heard. He fought really hard, and it was incredibly sad.

It's been 8 ½ years and it feels very surreal that I have been on my own for this time. The first year is always the hardest. It does get easier, and you move into a new normal. I miss him immensely and some days are still harder than others. Before Jason passed away, I saw people through my work loose loved ones and this helped me prepare better. Including, leaving nothing left unsaid. Everything he wanted was done. Including the Cummins Red’s Football song being sung at his funeral! He spoke to Fermby prior to the end and made promise to make sure it was sung!

Talking to Ingrid has helped me greatly. Ingrid helped me realise that the grief and loss I was feeling at certain milestone years was very normal. I haven’t been camping since Smoky Bay. I know it shouldn’t stop me but it’s not the same without him. I don’t go to football. Which is really sad, because I know Mitchell would love me to see him play. I have changed a lot since Jason died. I have been working through this period and it’s been interesting. I have so much guilt about being happy. But I do know it’s ok to be happy. In the next 12 months I want to go to Tasmania with one of my best friends. And then start planning an annual trip after that and start living a bit more. I have put living on hold since COVID as I lost some confidence to go out after all the lockdowns. I am so grateful to have been married to my truelove for 22 years. Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but our love was. I will always be grateful for that. I feel so lucky to have had this time with Jason and our kids.