I was raised in south Gippsland, Victoria, however my family originates from Lunawanna-Alonnah country in Tasmania. I have a deep-rooted passion for occupational therapy that derives from personal experience with an occupational therapist as a teenager, along with a love for helping people.

I am extremely grateful to be deemed a recipient of this scholarship, and would like to address my appreciation to the Australian Rotary Health group.

As a qualified Occupational therapist, I aim to improve Indigenous health by offering a culturally safe and diverse practice for all clients. As an Indigenous woman myself, I understand how western medicine can be and is daunting, so I will be able to provide my cultural understanding and knowledge to ensure that my practice provides options for treatment that are beyond that of typical western treatment plans. I want my practice to be a space where Indigenous people are encouraged to reach out and seek treatment, especially for those struggling with mental health problems. In my studies and personal life, I have been able to witness the detrimental impacts and domino effect of the prevalence mental health problems in Indigenous communities. I want to be able to help people in my community to engage in their occupations in a way that enhances their quality of life, reducing cycles of generational trauma.

I also would like to work in paediatrics, working with Indigenous children to combat these issues commonly seen in the community before they present and are harder to treat. This also relieves the unnecessary burden of the client from an early age, improving not only physical health but also spiritual and mental health in Indigenous communities.

Indigenous health is a topic that has been very important to me from a young age as I have witnessed first-hand how much it does impact generations of an entire population of people.

This semester was overall exciting, busy and terrifying all at once. I started my research project at a primary school in Ringwood. In my project, I am paired with 2 other girls and we are creating a journal for grade 5 children where they are able to problem solve, regulate their emotions, talk about friendship issues and
communicate privately with their teacher. This project has had its ups and downs but I have been so excited to work on it with the other girls. In semester 1 of 2026 we will create the journal and implement it in term 2 of the primary school.

In my other subject, we continued with the scenario-based learning where we were given a prompt and had to create a 10 minute presentation about what we would do with this person and in this situation. I really enjoyed this subject as I was able to put into practice the things I love most, which is occupational therapy. I was very proud of myself after creating a well-received presentation to my class about the impacts of connection to culture on Indigenous youth. I received amazing feedback from my tutors and the class and felt accomplished to be spreading the real issues that Indigenous youth face when they are not connected to culture.

Lastly, I had another unit called advocates in Indigenous health. Here I worked in a team with people studying across other disciplinaries in Monash and were given a scenario where a racial injustice occurred. We were required to discuss what we would do as health professionals to advocate for the patient. This unit was definitely worthwhile to see real life scenarios that may occur in the real world and to have these important discussions about racism and injustices with people across different disciplinaries.

While this semester was very busy and sometimes never felt like it was ever going to end, I came out of it very proud and satisfied with my achievements and persistence.