Holly is a 13-year-old girl living in Albany, WA. She also has CF. She loves sport and home schools with her older sister Jamilla. They both enjoy horse riding. This is Holly’s story of her adventures in the Northern Territory.
In 2016, my family decided to plan a trip to see brumbies in their natural habitat. We decided to go to the Northern Territory after watching a video “The Desert Brumby”. We planned to go in June 2017, but we received a call from PMH (Princess Margaret Hospital) saying I had to go into hospital as I had grown Pseudomonas in a recent sputum sample.
I spent three weeks in hospital to eradicate the Pseudomonas. We started to plan our trip for the end of August. Unfortunately, my lung function didn’t improve after the hospital admission and it didn’t look like we would be able to go on our trip. I worked really hard doing all my treatments to improve my lung function, so we would be able to go on our trip. We travelled to Perth to see how my lung function was going. It improved marginally, and we spoke to my doctor about still going on our trip. As I had been doing such a good job at home and promised to continue whilst away he let us GO, Yay!
In order to continue my treatments on our trip we had to pack lots of medicine and equipment. Two of my medicines, Pulmozyme and Tobromycin, needed to be kept cold so we had to borrow a car fridge off my Uncle Lee. My dad brought an inverter for my nebuliser. Finally, we set off across the Nullarbor on the 27th of August.
On the first few days we did up to 1100km/day! The road was long and straight and on the sides of the road there were a few shrubs, but mostly bare and orangey and rocky. My sister Jamilla and I got a bit bored, but to keep ourselves amused we read books, played games and slept. One of our few stops was at the Great Australian Bight. There were huge drop off cliffs next to the ocean. Another stop was at Cooper Pedy, where they have opal mines and an underground museum and underground houses. The opal mines were a bit ugly, like big piles of dirt. There were hundreds of piles of dirt with holes next to them, but the opals were really pretty.
Most nights we pulled off the road and drove down a path and dumped our swags. One morning we woke up and our swags had frost on them!
It took us four days to get to Alice Springs. We stayed at the caravan park and the next morning we went to Desert Springs Wildlife Park. We watched a bird show that was amazing then we went around the park. I started to feel a bit hot and tired, so I got an ice cream and Jamilla and dad kept going whilst mum and I had a break. I felt a bit better, so I got dressed in some cooler clothes and went to find Jamilla and dad. My favourite thing was the bird show. After that day we headed out to the West McDonald Ranges to see the gorges.
We went to Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek Big Hole, Serpentine Gorge, Ormiston Gorge, Glen Helen Gorse and Redbank Gorge. All the gorges were so beautiful, they looked like a big slice through the world. We went swimming in all of the gorges that had water. The water was like ice, so freezing!
After travelling in the West McDonald Ranges we went to Kings Canyon. It was a half day walk and you had to start before 10am because of the heat. We went across bridges and climbed rocks, it was really hard work, but we got through it. It was also really hot and long, the cliffs were really huge with big drop offs. On the other side of the cliff were some people that waved to us which was really cool. It was a great walk but so tiring.
We then headed to Running Water Yard to find the brumbies. Running Water Yard is on the Finke River, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We camped there for three nights and saw lots of brumbies. They were really cautious. We saw different harems, most had a stallion a couple of mares and at least one foal. They were magnificent, particularly the stallions. They were lots of different colours.
After that we went to Uluru. We went on a camel ride, my first but by far the best. You could see Uluru from the camels. Camels feel very different to ride than horses. It was weird at first but got better. It was really scary when the camels got up with their front feet first and when they go down they get down with their front feet first. That same day we walked around Uluru. Let’s just say Uluru is so amazing and beautiful, it is massive. Then we went to the sunset viewing to watch the sunset. It was so amazing and awesome. After watching the sunset, we went to a place called Outback Pioneer BBQ. We had crocodile, kangaroo steak, an emu sausage and a buffet salad. I loved the crocodile the most. The emu sausage was a bit weird, it tasted a bit bitty and the kangaroo steak was very nice.
After that we went back to camp and set up for bed. The next morning, we set out to go to the Olgas. They look a lot like sand in the desert; wavy also a bit like coral. After that we started heading home on the Great Central Road. It was a long drive on red dirt. We saw brumbies crossing the road which was really cool. We also saw lots and lots of camels on the sides of the road.
We were all very excited to get back after three weeks.
Interview from Rozee Magazine, 2019.