"Where the People Are" – Part 5: These Kids Are My Drive
Jayrahni is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman who grew up in Alice Springs, Mackay and Cairns and has family connections from Badu and Thursday Islands to Coen. She is also a mother of two. This is her story, told in her own words and shared in five parts. It starts with a mother who would not take no for an answer.
Part 5: These Kids Are My Drive
By Jayrahni Nicholls
None of this was part of my plan.
I never expected to become a nurse. I never thought I would stay at Ngak Min for six years. I did not imagine I would be the person my RHD kids call, or sometimes do not call, and the one who tracks them down no matter what. I did not expect to turn down the chance to return home to Alice Springs, the place my parents always hoped I would return to so I could help my people, because I could not bring myself to leave the kids at Djarragun.
None of this was planned. It simply became what I do and who I am.
I first met Dr Ben Reeves in 2021, when he came to Ngak Min for the first outreach clinic at Djarragun College. As the only paediatric cardiologist serving children across the top of the country, Ben covers a vast area of remote communities where many children with rheumatic heart disease would otherwise have no access to specialist care.
He travels with his nurse, Erin, bringing the echocardiogram, or heart scan, directly into communities. This means children can get the specialist care they need without having to travel long distances.
Being in the room with Dr Ben and Erin during those scans changed me. Watching the heart on the screen, seeing the damaged valve, and matching a face and a scan to the name on my list made the work feel more real and the stakes clearer. Every time I track down a kid for their overdue injection, I hope for a scan that shows a healthy heart. That is the connection. That is why I keep calling.
What stood out to me about Dr Ben is simple. He does this work because he wants a better future for these kids. You can tell when someone is just doing a job and when someone has a mission. He and Erin have a mission. Working with people like them raises your own standards, even without them saying anything.
People have asked me what strong mentorship looks like. To me, it means having someone you truly connect with, someone you feel safe enough to ask questions you would never ask your boss. It is someone who never makes you feel small for not knowing something. I have been lucky to have people like that at different times: Aunty Desley, early on; my dad, always; Dr Ben and Erin, in the RHD space; and Charmaine, my mum, who stands up for Ngak Min in places where I cannot be.
I am still learning and growing. I am still the youngest person in the building and I plan to hold onto that for as long as I can. But I am starting to see that, whether I want the title or not, staying here comes with responsibility. I am an Indigenous registered nurse who has done this work long enough to know what good care looks like and what it takes to provide it. The next generation of Indigenous healthcare workers does not need me to be perfect. They need to know what standards to aim for, what is possible and what it looks like when someone refuses to give up on a kid.
What I want for the future of Indigenous healthcare in Cape York is simple: more of us. More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people returning to their communities as nurses, doctors and paediatricians. Right now, when you visit a community health service, you mostly see locums and mostly white faces. That is not good enough. It is not that those people do not care, but something changes when a kid walks into a room and sees someone who looks like them. A barrier drops before anyone even speaks.
I want that experience to be the norm, not the exception.
I want RHD to be wiped out. Completely. We managed it in mainstream Australia in the 1950s. The fact that it is still here, still hurting our kids, still putting children on operating tables in 2025, is unacceptable. Overcrowding, housing and access all play a part. These are problems we can solve, but none of them are being fixed quickly enough.
And I want the next generation of kids – including my own – to grow up being proactive about their health. Not waiting until things are unbearable. I want them attending their annual health checks. Walking into a clinic before they are sick, not because they have no other choice. That shift starts with healthcare being a positive experience and that starts with the people delivering it.
Someone recently asked me what example I hope my children see in my work.
I was not sure how to answer, so I will say it simply. I got up, I studied, I did not take no for an answer and when I was knocked down, I got back up. I do not sit at home waiting for Centrelink payments. I show up every day for kids who are not mine because someone needs to.
I began this journey not wanting to be a nurse. Six years later, I am still here, turning down opportunities to leave because the Djarragun kids keep me here. When I was sixteen, driving to Balance Edmonton with my learner's permit, I never could have guessed what any of this would lead to.
It led to this, and this is more than enough.
These kids are what drive me. They always have been. They are the reason I come to work, pick up the phone, track down those who do not answer, sit in a room for an hour before giving an injection, and feel the weight of every red name on a compliance list.
They are the reason. Every one of them.
Looking back over these five parts, I keep wondering why I agreed to share all of this in the first place. It was not comfortable putting so much of my life on the page. Talking about Alice Springs, Dr Ben and Erin, the kids on my compliance list, and the parts of the job that keep me up at night.
But I wanted people to see what this work actually looks like, not the polished version. If even one person reading this understands RHD a little better, feels less alone doing the same kind of work, or decides to study nursing because they saw someone who looks like them doing it, then writing this was worth it.
I began this journey not wanting to be a nurse. I never planned for any of this. But somewhere along the way, this work, these kids, and this community became part of who I am.
I hope you got something out of my journey.
I know I did.
FOR THE LOVE OF OUR CHILDREN
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