Aphasia WA

Introducing Julie. Julie loves to travel and in 2025 a highlight was travelling to Bali with her son, Travis, and her daughter-in-law. This was her first trip in about four years and she had a fantastic time! Julie also enjoys sport, watching soccer in the winter time and going along to Little Athletics to watch her granddaughters Stella and Ivy take part.

Reflecting on 2025 Julie shared that her highlights included:

🛫 Her trip to Bali

🏊‍♀️ Swimming

🍤 Going out to restaurants and eating some of her favourite foods including prawns.

In 2026 Julie hopes to:

🌏 Do more overseas travel

🏡 Paint her house

👯‍♀️Catch up with friends regularly.

❤️ Julie’s advice for people with aphasia is to get involved in the Conversation Groups.

Introducing John. In 2009 John and his wife
moved from Melbourne to Perth. John has Primary Progressive Aphasia and goes to the Floreat Conversation Group. He enjoys spending time with his family, having meals out and going to concerts.

Reflecting on his highlights of 2025, John shared that:

🏙️ He travelled to Melbourne a few times to watch his grandson play football.

🏉 John’s grandson plays football in the AFL, playing for St Kilda.

John’s hopes for 2026 include:

💪 To stay strong and healthy and exercise often.

🏆 To visit Melbourne again and watch his grandson play football 🏉

🏝️ To visit Christmas Island

❤️ John’s advice for people with aphasia is to never give up.

Introducing Pete. Pete has had aphasia
for nine years and he feels that his aphasia has improved.

Reflecting on his highlights of 2025, Pete shared that:

🏰 He enjoys museum visits.

🇯🇵 He visited Japan on a trip with his neighbour, Sam, who speaks Japanese. Pete also went to Bali with schoolmates from Trinity College.

Pete’s hopes for 2026 include:

🇧🇼 To visit Botswana.

🗣️ He hopes to attend aphasia meetings 3 times a week.

❤️ Pete’s advice for people with aphasia is to practice and keep trying.

👩‍🎓 Late last year we had a lovely collaborative experience with students from Curtin University. Joy, Xuanxu and Melissa visited a couple of our Conversation Groups, and spent time talking with members about their reflections on 2025 and hopes for the year ahead.

📝 Generously, people shared their stories and Joy, Xuanxu and Melissa wrote them down. We will feature these stories over the coming weeks.

❤️Join us in learning about some of the people who come along to the Conversation Groups.

🙏 Thank you to Joy, Xuanxu and Melissa for your special work!

Last month Bruce Simcock (Vice President Aphasia WA) and Robyn Simcock (Memberships Coordinator) were invited speakers at an event to celebrate 30 years of the Stroke Foundation.

The event, titled “Stronger Together” was hosted by the CEO of the Stroke Foundation, Dr Lisa Murphy.

Bruce and Robyn spoke of their shared and lived experience of stroke and aphasia. They were joined on their panel by Dr Brooke Ryan (Speech Pathologist, Curtin University).

Robyn and Bruce are wonderful advocates for centring the lived experience of stroke and aphasia. Their stories, like those of everyone who comes to the Conversation Groups, are important and vital for motivating great clinical care, research and community-based supports.

We thank Robyn and Bruce for their dedication to promoting awareness of aphasia and for taking opportunities like this to connect, share and advocate.

⭐️🐠 Introducing Jim and Glenys Kerr

❤️ Jim and Glenys are part of Aphasia WA’s community. Recently we were talking about sharing stories from the community and Glenys offered some of her beautiful writing.

📝Since she and Jim started their journey and life with aphasia, Glenys has been writing both of experiences had and snippets of the funnier moments too. Like when Jim meant to praise Glenys by telling her she looked “quite elegent” for a night out but ended up saying she looked “quite elephant” 🐘!

🎣 Glenys has kindly shared this absolute ripper of a story about Jim’s experience of returning to fishing after his stroke, and becoming a volunteer with a a fabulous organisation called Fishability.

Over to Glenys:

“Jim has been fishing passionately since he was about 8 years old when he walked a few kms from his home (carrying all of his fishing gear) to Nedlands Jetty. It’s been a huge part of his life and he has quite a collection of photos and stories gathered over the years; fishing every state in Australia and many other parts of the world.

On a fishing charter, about a year before Jim retired, he had a chance to help a group of hearing impaired anglers. He loved the experience and said that, in his retirement, he would be so happy to be able to help other ‘less able’ folk, enjoy a day fishing.

Retirement came and we searched high and low to find a suitable opportunity for Jim to fulfill his wish. It was proving to be more difficult than we had anticipated.

Another year went by and we headed off on a bit bigger boat (ship) to cruise from Singapore to Japan. It was during that cruise that Jim unfortunately had his stroke and we were both medically disembarked in Hualien, Taiwan, where we stayed for a month. After Jim’s surgery I was asked by the surgeon to test if Jim could read or write (clearly checking for Aphasia). I asked Jim to write the word ‘Love’ (in the little notebook that a beautiful Buddhist nurse gave me) and to my utter astonishment, he did a childlike drawing of a fish swimming through rough ocean waves.

Jim was diagnosed with Receptive and Expressive Aphasia; we returned home to start our Aphasic journey.

During Speech therapy, at Osborne Park Hospital, I saw a flyer advertising Fishability.
At first I thought it would be a safe environment for Jim to attend as a participant, as he was quite unsteady and not making a lot of sense verbally. When we arrived at Fishability to hopefully arrange for Jim to join in the activity, he took it all in then said he would rather help than be helped.

Now 50 volunteer sessions later that exactly what he does!

He has since volunteered at Hillarys; Mindarie, Garvey Park, Nedlands Jetty (coincidentally!) on the Fishability Boat that leaves from Royal Perth Yacht Club and on the annual Top Gun Fishability charter.

Jim still can’t tell anyone the name of the fish that he helped them catch, nor name a lot of the fishing equipment but he has proven he still knows how to catch fish 😊

Facilitated through the Australian Aphasia Association, this online course may be of interest to people supporting people with Primary Progressive Aphasia.

Please see the post below and the link there for finding out more.

A new online group for care partners of people with PPA starts in August.

🎶 Playing and making music has been part of Jordan’s life for a long time.

❤️As these videos show, Jordan’s talent and the benefits of making music have supported him in his journey of life with aphasia.

🎸 In these videos Jordan and his friend Maria combine percussion, guitar and voice to create beautiful music. Such talent! And now, he and Maria are taking their music to the people!

🗓️ This Friday the 20th March, Jordan and Maria will be busking at Forrest Place, Perth CBD. They’ll be there for a busking slot between 11am -1pm.

✨ If you’re in or around town, pop in to Forrest Place on Friday and show Jordan your support!

🐶 DOGS OF APHASIA WA: JOONDALUP EDITION

🥰 We know how much joy our doggo friends bring. They are wonderful company and always up for a pat, an ear scratch or a chat.

🐾 Here are some of the good and gorgeous doggos from members of the Joondalup Group. Cuteness overload!

🗣️ You just know that these pups give their humans so many stories to share at the Group.

Keep sending us your photos of your dogs (cats and other pets are welcome too!)

🙋 A post from Bruce (Vice President of Aphasia WA)

🍴Members of the Floreat group went to dinner at the Cambridge Bowling Club recently for an Italian Buffet.

🏟️ Not only does the Club offer the venue free of charge to Aphasia WA they offer a Social membership to enjoy the Club facilities. Aphasia WA have held our annual quiz night in the past.

🙏 We are very thankful for their continuing support and encourage all AphasiaWA members to join up as social members. Anyone can enjoy a game bowls!

🧐 Aphasia WA is happy to support and share information about these two WA-based research projects. They are looking for people to join their research.

🙋‍♀️🙋The projects were reviewed by our Research sub committee. Every project is reviewed by at least two people with aphasia before any support is given. Sometimes we ask the researchers for more information or suggest some tweaks to ensure people with aphasia benefit from being involved.

📧 If you would like to be involved please get in touch with the researchers.