Our Story

We are a family of five; myself Karan, my husband Dan, Drew who’s 17, Danielle who is 14 and Timara who is 11. Danielle has a rare syndrome called Wolf Hirshhorn which affects her in many ways both mentally and physically, she attends a special needs school, but she is the happiest, funniest and most loving individual.
We had our son Drew and all was well, then in April 1994 Danielle was born and it took a year to get an actual diagnosis of her condition. We, as many other families with specific syndromes or conditions were given the worst news and told we would be lucky if she lived to reach her first birthday. Even if she reached a year, we were told that age 3, then age 7, and then the teens were very dangerous milestones. But we learnt to cope. Yes it was tough and it meant we had to care for her needs 24 7 but our view was, we would have to do the same for any baby or young child, she just needed a little extra. We bravely went on to have our daughter Timara who was all ok. We have three beautiful children who we would not change for the world.
As time went on we heard about a family at Danielle’s school who had taken their son to swim with the dolphins. We managed to meet one day when collecting our children from school and from that moment on our lives changed. Sally explained how she had fund raised to take her son Aaron to swim with the dolphins, how amazing it was and how much of a positive change it made to Aaron and their whole family. We felt so positive about doing the same for Danielle that we began to write to charities and fund raise for ourselves with the help of family, friends and Sally. We began to also develop a great friendship and it felt like we had known each other and our families for ever. We finally raised enough money for us as a family to go and swim with the dolphins in Australia. It was a place called the 'Dolphin Discovery Centre' in Bunbury, Western Australia.