Trey moved to Perth Western Australia in 2019 in an attempt to improve his physical and emotional wellbeing and get his life back on track. On 16 October 2019 Trey’s entire world changed when he was involved in a motor vehicle accident which resulted in him sustaining life threatening injuries. This required a 3 month stay in hospital before being transferred to a local care facility suitable to his complex care needs.
Trey’s Aunty Lavenia tells his story, “Trey now faces a different prison, and unlike the prisons he has been in before this one has no release date; Trey is imprisoned in his own body and he can no longer make decisions of any kind when it comes to where he lives, where he goes, or how he can get there”.
“Trey is not a blade of grass in a field of millions of blades, he is unique, adored, loved, and one Gomeroi man amongst thousands of men and he is not misplaced or lost in our hearts or our nation”
Aunty Lavenia
During this extremely challenging and uncertain time in Trey’s life his family in New South Wales were able to send Trey’s grandfather Larry and grandmother Jedda, over to Perth. They stayed with him for 8 months after his accident. Having Larry and Jedda be able to go and physically be with Trey meant the world to the rest of his family, and while it was extremely upsetting that they couldn’t all be there, they were extremely grateful that his grandparents could be.
The heartache of Trey’s accident was amplified by the distance placed between him and his family and while Trey was being provided with the necessary health care and treatment he required, there was still so much missing from his life. Things that he couldn’t receive from a doctor, medication or a piece of equipment. Trey needed his family and his culture.
Trey’s family longed for the opportunity to be able to embrace him, support him, but more importantly, in Lavenia’s words, “we long to celebrate Trey’s life and show him that life is worth living”. Larry, Jedda and Lavenia’s unconditional love for Trey would not allow them to rest until he was home on country and back with his family. “Gomeroi people believe that we are not to pass away too far from our nation or land, we would become boundless and are never to rest peacefully”, Lavenia shares. So they fought. They fought for Trey, they fought for their family, they fought for their cultural rights.
Funding was granted to support Trey to transition back to New South Wales, where his journey began. What the family were told would take 5 to 6 years, with the support of Westhaven’s goal focused team and Trey’s very determined family members, worked together to support Trey to transition to his placement in Orange within 7 short months. This task was definitely no easy feat and worth every single minute spent to reunite this young Gomeroi man with family, culture and country.