I was born in Calgary Alberta in Canada so I grew up with the Calgary stampede. It’s the biggest rodeo in the world. I was a competitive swimmer for 12 years and I travelled over here to Australia in 1994 to train with the national team. I loved Australia. I was 19.
I went back and I lived in Vancouver for about 10 years and I ended up moving to a place called Squamish where I bought a place. It’s between Whistler and Vancouver. I’ve been a massage therapist for over 20 years and became a teacher up in Whistler as well.
I got right into downhill mountain biking. I loved it! When the season opened up in 2009 I was actually at a friends wedding and I said I need to go home tonight. I was supposed to stay that night but I caught the last ferry from Vancouver Island. The next morning I had this massive urge to go biking. The first chairlift ride was a 4 man ride and there were 3 guys, Ando, Nathan, another guy and myself. We introduced ourselves and talked a bit. I was about to turn to them and see if they would like to ride with me as I knew they were new. Ando turned to me first and asked me to ride with them. I ended up taking them around the whole mountain. It’s straight down hill. I have pictures of us going down hill pretty much vertically. At the end of the day I got Nathan’s number. I never really thought much. There’s a lot of Australians up there and you know they’re transient so you don’t think about meeting anyone. I was happy to hang out and have fun. We started riding more and more.
Nathan hurt his shoulder so I took him out to a lake instead of riding and that was the first time we kind of saw each other outside of all our gear. Up until then we were in helmets and padded everything. I thought, Ok..he looks pretty nice and he has the best smile. We started dating and I invited him to my birthday down in Squamish. He couldn’t make it but he said, How old are you turning? I said, You have to guess? He guessed 24 and I was turning 35. I’m 8 years older than him. I ended up taking him hiking as there’s so many beautiful lakes around there. We went fishing and camping and we really clicked on so many levels, spiritually, health wise and our love of adventure.
Nathan was going to Mexico for 3 months with some mates. He left and I went down about 6 weeks later and stayed for 2 weeks. There was a big group of us and we had a ball. He came back in the December and I took him to Phoenix where my parents celebrate Christmas to meet the family. My parents flew us over here to Townsville which is where Nathan was living and that’s where his family was. I stayed for 3 months. We travelled down to Victoria in his 68 HJ Holden and we camped and surfed all along the coast. We really loved this area the best, Lennox, Evans Head, Ballina and thought one day we would eventually live here.
I went home, sold my house, packed up everything and put it on a ship. Nathan came over in the June and we travelled for 6 months through Peru and Mexico. We climbed Mount Chachani which is 6,000 metres. It is higher than the base camp of Mt Everest and it was the scariest thing I have ever done, I cried. You are walking so slow, you can’t breathe, your heart is pounding and the air is so thin. I wanted to turn around but they wouldn’t let me. The equipment they gave us was so old and my hands were frozen. It was incredibly steep they had to tie ropes to us. We also went to the second deepest canyon in the world, Colca Canyon in Peru. It was a 3 day hike with an oasis at the bottom, natural springs and beautiful ponds. We spent a week in the Amazon. We caught and ate Piranhas and we got to a pat a Sloth. They come out of the trees to have a poo. They dig their poo into the dirt. We had so many good adventures.
We came home and we worked from Townsville to Mackay. Almost 6 months later I fell pregnant with our daughter Aurora. We decided to move to the Northern Rivers when I was 8 months pregnant. We didn’t really know where we were going when we moved to Ellangowan. We were sort of in the middle of nowhere, lots of leeches, mozzies and snakes plus we were 45 minutes from Lismore. There was no internet and we wanted to get out of there.
We rented a place down the road for a year from where we are now in Spring Grove. We saw this Lot and bought it. It’s taken us 4 years. We built our shed first and lived in that for 2 years while we built our house. We are living off the grid, totally solar, a worm farm. Nathan is an Arborist which is handy. We grow our fruit trees, our vegies and have our chickens for eggs. Nathan has built boxes for our native bees so we are into honey and he loves bee keeping. I teach swimming up at Summit and I’m still doing massage on the side.
We love living here! Aurora loves Caniaba school. We wait for the cows to cross the road and it’s so beautiful out here but still only 20 mins from Lismore. I love Australia and I feel Australian. I’m looking forward to becoming an Australian citizen one day. We are really family orientated. We went for a hike out at Protestors Falls last week. So much beauty on our doorstep!”