I covered my face with a pillow to block out the blinding light. “Can you draw the curtains, please?” I begged my husband, Glenn.

For months, I’d been suffering debilitating migraines which left me hiding out in my darkened bedroom. It turned out I had encephalitis and meningitis but as the weeks passed, I started to overcome my illness.

Finally feeling like I could handle an outing, I took my kids, Nathan and Jessica, to the local show. As we strolled around, I spotted a stall where a woman had a live possum on her head.

“What’s all this?” I asked her. “We’re from a wildlife rescue group,” she explained. “We help native animals in trouble.” How kind, I thought. Glenn and I owned a six-acre block of land, Minton Farm, and we were always spotting kangaroos, possums and koalas roaming around. I realised that if we learnt how to care for them properly, we could help any that were injured or abandoned.

“I’d love to do what I can,” I told the woman.

She invited me to join the rescue group’s weekly session where I learned how to rescue possums and kangaroos. I hoped it would give me the boost I needed to get back on my feet and love life again. When I came home from the sessions, I passed my new knowledge on to my family.

“You should do this as a job, Mum,” Jessica said. “So many animals out there need you.”

For now, it was just a hobby. I had so much more to learn. Soon, I noticed the majority of local incidents involved cats attacking birds, so I joined the Bird Care society, too. It wasn’t long before rescuing animals became my passion.

Word spread to the wider community and people from across the state began asking for my help. Every week, a new possum or kangaroo was dropped at the house and I’d mend their injuries on the kitchen table. Soon, there were more animals than I knew what to do with and I had to rope in my family to help out. Jessica would hand me bandages as I fixed a wound on a kangaroo, and Nathan usually followed me around the farm each morning, helping to feed the animals. Most nights we’d sit down to watch the telly with possums running up the curtains and little bettongs hiding in our slippers. It was mayhem, but we all loved it. When we had more animals than the four of us could cope with, I recruited volunteers to help and created the Minton Farm Animal Rescue Centre.

Over the years, we rescued more than 12,000 animals. Our main aim was to release the animals back into their natural habitat but that wasn’t always possible. Some were too sick to return to the wild, so they came to live with us. They were a welcome addition to our family.

One day, a friend who worked at a cattle station up north called me. “We’ve got a wedge-tailed eagle chick whose mother was shot… the siblings have all died,” he said. “Our farm hand has been looking after her, but we’re not sure what to do from here.” When the chick arrived at our place, she was just a white ball of fluff. The farm hand had done the right thing – she never would have survived in the wild. But since she’d been raised around humans, we couldn’t release her, so she moved in with us. Soon after, we received an owl egg that was found in the ruins of a fire at a piggery. “Let’s keep it warm and see what happens,” I said, unsure if it was already too late. Days later, a baby barn owl emerged from the egg. “We’ll call her Ewok,” I smiled to the kids, cradling the tiny animal in my palm. We built another enclosure next to the eagle.

Now we have possums, kangaroos, wombats and a whole range of birds.

With the recent bushfires, we were inundated with calls about burned animals. One was from a chap who lived down the road. “I’ve got an echidna under my property that won’t come out. She looks in bad shape,” he said. “Wait for her to come out overnight, then put her in the bath tub and we’ll come and collect her,” I told him. Next day, the echidna still hadn’t come out. A week passed before we caught sight of the damaged creature, whose weight was only half of what it should have been. “She’s a little skeleton under her quills,” I gasped as I inspected her. She couldn’t get out to feed because her toes had been scorched in the fires. We named her Ethel and promised to get her better. After giving her antibiotics, we bathed her burns, then bandaged up her feet. Within days she started to respond to the treatment and began to eat again. Our whole family was stoked. I shared updates on Ethel’s condition on our Minton Farm Animal Rescue Centre Facebook page and followers fell in love with the sweet, spiky creature. Ethel’s injuries were too severe for her to ever return to the wild, so we brought her to nearby Cleland Wildlife Park. Now she lives in an enclosure with fellow echidnas and even a couple of bandicoots! Looking to the future, I know there will be plenty more animals like Ethel who will come into our care.

We have exciting plans for our rescue centre, like building extra enclosures for our birds of prey and improving the facilities for our volunteers. I never imagined when I signed up to the wildlife group all of those years ago, I would find my life’s purpose. But now I’m living life to the fullest and can honestly say that saving animals has helped me, too.

• To donate, visit www.mintonfarm.org

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