My wife, Amanda and I purchased the Cummins Bakery on the 2nd of February, 2022. I grew up at Murdinga and moved to Gawler for work with Wesfamers, (now Nutrien) and to be with my wife. We were there for 2 years, Amanda worked for Gawler South Bakery. Prior to moving from Gawler to Adelaide to live, I started working for ABB grain which is now know as Viterra. During this time Amanda worked for the Stamford Plaza and stayed at home to raise our three children. My main roles at Viterra were domestic and export logistics.

My brother rang me during 2012, as they were picking up some more share farming and he wanted to know if I was keen to come back and be part of the family farm. While I was away, they had sold at Murdinga and bought land at Wangary which is where I would be working with Scott.

2013 was our first year on the farm. By this time, we were married and we had 3 children; Ella, James and Cameron. We lived in Coffin Bay and I travelled to the farm each day. Ella was attending school, James was at Kindy and Cameron was only 2 and a 1/2. About 6 months in, my wife Amanda who is a pastry chef by trade, started baking cakes for Del Giorno’s. Initially only a few each week, but soon moved to supplying majority of their biscuits and cakes. Amanda’s business was called Patisserie Siviour.

This first time on the family farm included long hours and very few days off. Initially, it was the ideal lifestyle. My brother moved away for 2 years, and I took on more of the day to day running of the farm and learnt to manage my time better.

When my brother came back, the time working together was really enjoyable. I was still working long hours, but it was a fun environment and we were all working towards the same goals.

During early 2018 our middle child, James, had been unwell, but Amanda and I didn’t realise this. He wasn’t able to let us know and thought the feelings he was having were normal. Looking back on photos now, we can see he looked unwell. His physical appearance slowly changed so therefore we didn’t pick up on this as we saw him each day. We look back at this time and cannot believe that we didn’t see how unwell he was. On the Wednesday he had a check-up in Cummins. It was fever based and his bloods got sent off straight away. Two days later on Friday 18th May, we were called to come up to Cummins Hospital, and James was flown out that night to Adelaide with the RFDS.

Amanda flew with him and I flew the next morning. I packed 2 lots of clothes, thinking he would be coming home. It was a weekend so the bone marrow biopsy that would confirm his illness didn’t take place until 2 days later on Monday. The oncologist gave us slim hope it was Glandular Fever. By Tuesday it was confirmed he had acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. B Cell. There are many other blood cancers and the specialist team gave us hope that this was one of the types that had a higher success rate. They spoke with us and provided a lot of information, we had time to speak with the doctors and ask questions. I remember asking “can he play sport when he gets better?” I still thought we would be heading home soon. We were told that James would need 6-7 months of intensive treatment, which ended up being 11, nearly 12 months. I stayed with James for the whole time. We had 3 visits back to Eyre Peninsula; 2 visits were for a couple of days and 1 visit was a week. We got these 3 visits due to delays in treatment and being stable enough to risk coming home. James started off quite well doing some schoolwork. He initially read a lot of books and did schoolwork each day. As the treatment continued, the concentration and energy levels required for schoolwork became harder. At each treatment block they gave us more information regarding next block of treatment, when they expected it to start, what to expect and how James was handling treatment as a whole. There was a period of time where he was getting seizures from a medication, and this was quite worrying. There were 2 seizures which did really scare us. Amanda looked after Ella and Cameron, worked, looked after the property and visited every 2 weeks. The treatment consisted of various intravenous medications, chemotherapy, lumbar punctures, blood transfusions, haemoglobin and platelets. He was so low one time, he fainted on the way to get a blood test. After the initial 11 months, “maintenance” started which would last a further 2 years. This included oral chemotherapy every night for the next 2 years, and trips to Adelaide every 4 weeks for intravenous and lumbar punctures. James had a total of 3 years of chemo going through his body. James and I got home late April 2019. We were both really excited to get the news to go home. We packed up and left straight away. However, being so close to his medical team for so long meant that I started getting anxious about being so far away from the oncologist and the team the closer we go to home.

When we came back, we came into lambing time. I had been home for only 2 weeks when I was out at the farm one day. I pulled stillborn twin lambs from a ewe and my brother noticed my breathing had changed. Within an hour I was having a full-on anxiety attack. We were in the paddock and we stopped at a gate and I got out and laid on the ground. I thought I was having a heart attack. After we got back to farmhouse and I rested, I started feeling better. I had another episode and then went to the Port Lincoln hospital. I ended coming up to Cummins hospital to see Dr Quigley. After talking through what was happening to me at each episode, I received some anti-anxiety medication pretty quickly. I see this as post-traumatic stress due to the time I spent caring for James and being apart from my wife and 2 other children. It was a really hard time for all of us. In the days and weeks that followed I felt awful. I know the first 2 weeks I was on medication I was like a zombie. After some time, I was feeling sick and wanted to ween off the medication but the underlying issue was still there. Any time where I felt not in control, I felt sick; at the barber, at footy, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, sitting in an aeroplane.

In early in 2020 we sold the farm at Wangary, but I was still having anxiety issues. I went to the doctor as I had not felt motivated to do anything for around 2 months. I was also feeling dizzy whenever I got up to do anything. The Doctor ran quite a few tests and said, “there is nothing wrong with you physically.” After hearing this I decided to get up no matter how I felt. I am pretty sure I had depression.

In May 2021, the same time James finished his treatment, I had a mate who was working at the Port Lincoln airport and he kept hassling me to work there also. I had to fly to Sydney to do the training and sit in a classroom. I felt sick at different times, it was hard. The first half of each day I felt awful. The situation made me feel so uncomfortable. Situations I couldn’t get out of if I wanted to. But doing this training led to me working at the airport and getting my confidence back. By getting myself out there and being around people made a big difference in my life. Without this we wouldn’t have been looking at the Cummins bakery as an option for a career for both of us. This would never have been an option if I wasn’t back feeling better. The drive would not have been there to pursue the opportunity. I really enjoy the bakery and customer service. I have a newfound passion for coffee, and our daughter Ella is now doing an apprenticeship as a pastry chef.

Being split as a family while James was unwell was so extraordinarily hard on us and our family dynamics. It has profoundly affected all of us in different ways. Advice for families about to go through something similar is, every scenario is different. If we knew what we know now, we would have gone as a family. I believe there is very little support for carers of those who are unwell. You don’t know what you need when you are faced with a situation like this. But speaking from experience, support carers need support themselves. Being unwell as a teenager can really knock their confidence around. James has settled in well and he and Cameron have adapted the best they can in Cummins. They’ve made friends and enjoy playing sport here, locally. This has been wonderful for them and us as a family.