Healing my spirit by helping others

From a young age I have  been interested in wildlife, reptiles and science. My dream was to become a zoo keeper, that way I could work with Australian wildlife and more importantly tell people about how amazing our animals truly are.

Just shy of my 17th birthday, against my mother’s wishes, I took a bit of a road trip and ended up in Western Australia. After a few google searches, I ended up at Boyup Brook, where I found a job working at Roo Gully Wildlife Sanctuary.  The interest in Roo Gully was sparked by the owner of the sanctuary and the park having these beautiful dugites (white spotted brown snake) on the property.

After a few months working at Roo Gully,  I decided to study a Captive Animals Certificate 3 in Zoo keeping, I  made my way back to the East Coast and began working at the Shoalhaven Zoo.  Everything was great for a couple of years, I was telling the story of native animals to the people of Shoalhaven and its visitors. I was happy, then everything turned on its head when I lost a dear friend to suicide and subsequently became lost. I was in need of a change and a new perspective; the hunger I had felt to tell the story of the animals was gone.

My step father saw a job in the Illawarra Mercury that said ‘Alpaca handler wanted’, so I said to myself “well hey, I am already handling snakes and crocs why not try alpacas”.

I rang the number and the man on the phone, Mr James Dixion, said “come to my house”, so I did and I started on the following Monday. My first alpaca I got to shear head butted me in the cheek and gave me a crack in my cheek bone, despite the injury, I kept going and working with the alpacas.

I was in need of a change and a new perspective, the hunger I had felt to tell the story of the animals was gone.

From a kid who was lost and grieving, shearing gave me the light again. The job had me travelling across Australia and New Zealand. Every time I would find things that I describe as kind of light bulbs in my brain.  One of these was in a shearing shed in Tamworth, I found the initials CW engraved on a wall. I spoke with the family where the sheds were located, it turned out it was actually a relative of mine who was a shearer. This was a crazy life changing experience for me.

Shearing allowed me to see the best of what Australia has to offer, along with being mentored by James. I really learn how to be a man and value my life and the things around me. A job offer from the RSPCA NSW came and it was time to say goodbye to the shearing, as hard as it was.

Following that job an even better role with Animal Welfare League NSW came along. It was then I decided to continue studying and became an animal technician.

Being a boy from the south coast I didn’t adapt to city life straight away so I ended up moving down to the southern highlands and started at Garvan Institute of Medical Research and a passion for science really developed and grew. I started to teach myself genetics starting with primary school grade to, eventually, fourth year biology. Something in me was desperate to tell the story of the animals again and the science so I set out to find myself a job in Sydney.

I moved to the University of Sydney in 2016 and my first point of call was to find AIME mentoring, the very group that mentored me as a teenager. I was desperate to get involved and start telling the stories once again.

Today I am keeping to my roots and have been trying my best to learn about my culture and give my people the pathways that I never had to succeed in Science and the Animal Industry.

It’s time for me as an Indigenous man to help others with their narrative and create the pathway that I so desperately craved.

What I have been doing is creating a network of scientists and people from the Animal Industry to come tell me about their story. We bond over a cup of coffee then, with their permission, I tell their stories with students through AIME.

Midway through last year I struck up a friendship with Dr Karl from Triple J and the University of Sydney.

Following that he soon got involved with my programs as a mentor and has made himself available for any of the students to chat to him about any topic they wish.

The other project I have been building is a pathway network to help students find work and placements in the Science and Animal Industry. I have helped three young Indigenous people find work via contacts and pathways. It is something that I am really passionate about and I am excited to see what the future will hold for the program.

I was incredibly lucky to have been given a chance to attend the 8th Healing Our Spirit Worldwide conference in Sydney recently. I didn’t know what to expect as I had never attended something like this before. When I arrived on the Monday I felt the energy almost immediately, and the fire to tell my story was lit inside once again.

On the Tuesday of the conference, I attended a mentoring workshop and was given the opportunity to speak about my journey of mentoring and its importance to young Indigenous people.

One speaker for the Mana Yura student support teams presentation, chaired by Jeremy Heathcoate, was absent. Jeremy approached me and asked me to present, I was shocked but I agreed to do it. As soon as I got on stage the fire in me to tell the story was there and I presented a 15 minute talk on Indigenous science and pathways with a bit of my journey in the mix. With that came some challenging questions but my fire to help the next generation of Indigenous scientists was burning bright and I was able to answer all those questions asked to me.

What I learnt from the conference was about spirit and family, and how much I value my heritage. How I am so lucky to be an Indigenous man, which is something I haven’t really felt before.

I also learnt lots about programs and pathways where I hope I can use some of the amazing things others are doing in my own pathways and journeys.

For me though the  main thing I got from the conference was as much pain and hurt Indigenous people from around the world have felt and suffered, the love is still ever present. At this conference the feeling was limitless and I instantly felt connected with everyone I met, this was really special to me.

I would like to thank the University of Sydney and Jeremy Heathcote and Maria Wynne for the opportunity to go to the conference and grow and learn.