Camp Quality Archives: One of our first campers, Anna

For over 40 years, Camp Quality has been supporting kids and families impacted by cancer. During those years, we have seen thousands of kids go to camp and make happy memories away from the hospital.

Every kid who attends our programs has a story to tell, and today we are going all the way back to the start, to Anna, who attended our very first Kids’ Camp in the Blue Mountains in 1983.

When Anna was two years old, she was still waking up constantly throughout the night. Her mum, Penny, was pregnant with her second child and was worried about having two kids up during the night. She decided to go to the doctor, just to be on the safe side.
“He gave me a form for a blood test for her but didn’t explain why, and I nearly didn’t use it,” says Penny.

Later that day, Anna had the blood test at Wollongong Hospital. A haematologist from Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital was visiting the hospital and happened to be the doctor running her tests.

“It was so very fortunate he was, as he specialised in cancer in children, and he detected just 150 leukocytes in Anna’s blood sample, instead of the usual multi-thousands. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia had been caught so early.”

“We rushed up to the Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital the next day, and she began a regimen of three years’ worth of chemotherapy and a course of radiation therapy on her brain as a precaution in case the ALL had escaped to the brain.”

During her treatment, Anna was selected for a trial treatment, a new regimen of chemotherapy that was milder than the standard course at that time.

“She sailed through treatment and had no setbacks at all. She apparently made medical history. We were so lucky.”

In 1983, Vera Entwhistle, our founder, held the first Camp Quality Kids’ Camp in the Blue Mountains, with four medical staff and four kids from Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital.

“It was not yet called Camp Quality and was organised as a trial to see how it could run in Australia. They stayed at Grose World, and I stayed nearby in Katoomba, just in case. The first camp went for four days, and there was craft and games.”

“Anna attended every camp thereafter, and the experiences she had were simply extraordinary. She went up in a helicopter and on a Sydney Harbour cruise, ziplined long before it became a ‘thing’! She met celebrities, rode a horse, and most of all became very close to her last companion, Louise, even attending Louise’s wedding! Louise is still in touch with Anna and us.”

When Camp Quality expanded and started inviting siblings to camps, Anna’s sister joined her.

Although Anna was told that she would not be able to have children due to the treatment she received, she has gone on to have four. She is now working as a midwife at The Canberra Hospital.

“Hard to believe it’s been over 40 years – and long may it last. Camp Quality is the most worthwhile charity that gives back a semblance of normality to all those young children and gives them a break from their treatments, as well as experiences they may well never have experienced otherwise. And of course, it gives the parents some necessary respite. A win-win.”