OFTEN the course one’s life takes is not what we imagined for ourselves.
Yet more often than not it is those who endure the most who are the ones that inspire the rest of us.
And sometimes it is a second chance that makes us believe.
The woman behind 'Herd of Hope', Megan McLoughlin, knows first-hand what it means to be given a second chance at life, for she herself is an double transplant recipient.
‘Herd of Hope’, the first of it’s kind event to be held at the end of May this year will see the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a workable stock route, closed off for stockmen on horseback to cross the iconic bridge with a herd of Australian cattle.
Each stockman has been directly connected to a life changing organ and tissue transplant.
The ‘Herd of Hope’ cattle drive was formed from the idea of Megan’s to promote organ and tissue donation awareness across Australia.
Megan received a double transplant (kidney-pancreas) in 2010.
After starting dialysis, which was taking its toll on her, Megan was given a month to live.
Megan received her transplant 20 days later. This is why she calls it her “second chance at life”.
“I am probably one of the only females you speak to that gets excited about turning another year older,” the now 35 year-old said.
“What drives me to do this event is I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have two beautiful children. The last six years I have been on borrowed time.”
Those two beautiful children are Sam (2) and Ella (10 months)
“I have been given the opportunity, and I am very very grateful,” Megan said. “I have two children that are such miracle babies, such blessings. Sometimes they are feral ratbags, but at the same time bring so much happiness.”
Megan met her husband Mark while she was still recovering from her transplant in Sydney.
It was also during this time that the iconic event idea sprang to the forefront.
“One morning while I was still in Sydney they had the 75th celebration of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Karl Stefanovic on the morning show ‘Today’ was joking about how funny it was that it was still an active stock route and you could take a herd of cattle across it as long as you pay the toll,” she said.
“I’ve gone ‘brilliant’, got straight onto the phone to my dad Jim and told him I think we should take a herd of cattle across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for organ donation awareness.
“Taking 90 per cent of the adjectives out of it, he said I was a bloody idiot, that I don’t think before I act and so on. He then hung up on me.”
But Jim rang Megan back 45 minutes later and simply said “I think you can do this”. And so the ‘Herd of Hope’ was born.
“This cause needed an event that captures the whole country,” Megan said. “I think every Australian thinks they are country persons at heart, even the people that live in central Sydney. This event captures that idyllic relationship we have with each other.”
Megan McLoughlin grew up on a cattle and horse property just outside of Bordertown, South Australia.
She now resides in the Barossa Valley with her husband Mark and their two young children, but is still actively involved in the family properties running cattle and horses.
Nine years ago, in 2008, a routine operation left Megan legally blind.
But Megan chooses not to share this with people straight away.
She didn’t even tell her husband Mark she was blind when they first started dating. A transplant yes, but blind, no.
She performed calculated moves like going to a restaurant she already knew and would get their first so she was seated and he had to find her.
“By our third date I nearly stepped in something, but he had already started to twig that something wasn’t right,” Megan said.
“He said to me ‘you nearly stepped in that’. I said ‘what?…. funny story actually, I am legally blind’.”
She said the psychology behind this is she likes to let people see how she functions before she tells them.
“I am still capable of saddling a horse, riding a horse and doing everything I possibly can,” she said.
She makes good use of her other senses.
“I have really good hearing and sense of smell,” she said.
“But I am also very tactile, my kids are very tactile because I have to feel their face with my hands.
“They don’t see that as being anything different – that is their world.”