Lilly-Rose and Lochlan on walking to raise awareness for kids with cancer

Walking for a worthy cause

Camp Quality awareness walk

September is childhood cancer awareness month, and Camp Quality has a big walk for little kids in September. You choose to walk either 25km, 50km or 100km. My partner and I are doing 200km, so 100km each!
I had acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia when I was two years old. Camp Quality was a big support role during this time – I was able to go on a lot of their trips. I was actually talking to my family recently about a snow trip I went on with Camp Quality and how great it was. I saw on Facebook they were advertising for this walk, and I thought what a great opportunity to give back and raise awareness for childhood cancer.

The walk has a Go Fund Me page. We originally had a goal of $720, but we reached that in the first few days. So we bumped it up to $1,500 and a week later we passed that goal. We have currently raised $2,140 and I have walked 170kms in total. The goal has been changed to $8,000, but we are not fussed if we don’t reach that goal, it’s more so it doesn’t limit the donations.

So far, Lilly-Rose and Lochlan have helped Camp Quality provide….

• 61 Digital Puppet Playdates
• 38 kids to attend a Camp Quality Family Fun Day
• 8 kids to attend a Camp Quality Family Camp
• 8 kids to attend a Camp Quality Kids Camp

How do you make the time to walk?

We walk at 6:00 am or 6:30 am most mornings for about an hour. This way, we have enough time to get ready and go to school. Throughout the exam period, it has been easier to walk because we can go for walks whenever throughout the day and work around our exams. It is always a nice study break.

Has having cancer when you were younger affected your life now?

One thing a lot of people who haven’t had cancer don’t realise is the later side effects. Not even cancer as such, but chemotherapy was what I used to treat my cancer.
One of the drugs made my heart weaken so now I have a heart condition called tachycardia. This means I have a fast heart rate, which limits me from a lot of things that I would like to do. I also get bad spinal pain. Chemotherapy can cause infertility which can occur later in life. One of my biggest worries is that I might pass on health issues to my children if I was to have children. This is another aspect I like to raise awareness for because not a lot of people talk about it.

Lilly- Rose’s story

I lost my mum to cancer when I was six.

I was really young at the time, so I didn’t really understand what was happening. In 2019, my dad was incarcerated. It has been really hard not having any parents in my teenage years.

Everything I do now, I do it for my mum…especially when it comes to cancer foundations. All I want to do is follow in her footsteps because she was amazing.