Outside a supermarket in Exmouth, a small town 1,250km north of Perth, a man notices Niki carrying Jimmy on her back. She is 152cm tall and he weighs 45kg. “He should be carrying you!” the man says.
Strangers often misjudge Niki’s son, who is 30 but looks, she says, “like he’s eight or nine”. Jimmy is blind and has panhypopituitarism, a hormonal disorder that affects fewer than one in 100,000 Australians each year. This condition halted his development, leaving him unable to walk or speak, with severe intellectual disability.
Niki hoists Jimmy on to her back for a walk along the beach in Exmouth. She has always carried him
By the time I catch up with Niki and Jimmy, they have spent a month in Exmouth, their longest stay since leaving Ipswich in December 2024. A 78 series Toyota Troop Carrier is home now. Basic necessities are packed tight around a narrow mattress. A photo of baby Jimmy rests next to a map tracing their route: nearly a complete lap of the country. Their cat, Kiska, guards the door, hissing at anyone who gets too close.
Our paths first crossed at South Australia’s Kilsby sinkhole, a deep freshwater chamber surrounded by farmland under threat from the groundwater crisis on the Limestone Coast. Niki freedived 20 metres on a single breath, slipping through shafts of light into the darkness, while Jimmy waited topside with fellow divers who had quickly embraced them. I wanted to know more about this remarkable mother and son, and why Niki had chosen this life for them.
In February 2024, three months into their time on the road, Niki freedives the Kilsby sinkhole in South Australia, pushing her limits to move through shafts of light 20 metres below. It’s where Niki finds her release; a calm and clarity she was missing before discovering freediving. With visibility all the way to the cave floor, some 27 metres down, the sinkhole is regarded as one of the world’s best freshwater dive sites. Jimmy waited above, cared for by strangers they had only just met, giving Niki precious time out
Six months later I find the pair at their sun-baked campsite on the Ningaloo coast. Niki, 47, has woken with numb shoulders again: Jimmy curls around her so tightly every night that she finds it hard to sleep. The desert around us is carpeted with purple mulla mulla wildflowers, vivid against the red earth. Jimmy sits by the Troopy, his hands reaching for hers as we chat.
Niki explains that life on the road is a reset: “I woke up and realised I wasn’t where I wanted to be.” The Covid years brought clarity: a desire to pare back life to the basics. “I wanted to get moving as soon as possible,” she says. “On the road, I feel like we are free to do whatever we like.”
But the work never stops. She carries Jimmy along beaches and hiking trails and manages all his daily routines. “I’ve been looking after a baby for 30 years but I focus on what he can do, not what he can’t.”
Jimmy was born in April 1995, two weeks early and jaundiced. Tests soon confirmed he was blind. Niki remembers the drive home from the hospital was silent; it was then she made a promise: “My heart broke but I was determined to give him the best life I could.”
Niki’s relationship with Jimmy’s father fell apart during those early months. Still a teenager and dealing with her own childhood trauma, Niki came close to ending her life. “It wasn’t Jimmy. For a long time, I just hated myself.” She says her baby’s laughter kept her going. “Despite what he didn’t have, he was always happy.”
Niki and Jimmy swim near Turquoise Bay on the Ningaloo coast. They are happiest by the water, with Niki diving when she can and Jimmy enjoying the sounds, smell and feel of the salty air and sand
Life soon fell into a routine: Jimmy attended special school while Niki balanced work at a radio station and raising him alone. When school ended, Jimmy’s disability pension disappeared into bills. Niki vowed never to put him in full-time care, working multiple jobs with help from support workers and family.
In three decades they haven’t spent more than a week apart. The national disability insurance scheme has “been “a godsend”, Niki says, letting her focus on full-time care while occasionally finding qualified support workers during their travels.
Small windows of time led her to freediving. In Exmouth’s clear lagoons, Niki can swim while Jimmy sits nearby in a beach tent, happy in the warmth and enjoying the feel of the sand, the sweet smell of wattle on the breeze.
Sometimes he joins Niki for a dip. At the water’s edge she lifts Jimmy on to her shoulders and wades into the shallows. He jolts at the cool water, then laughs, drawing smiles from nearby families. “He deserves to have the life of a 30-year-old,” Niki says.
Niki carries Jimmy after a boat ride on the Exmouth Gulf. ‘Jimmy is the happiest person I’ve ever met,’ she says
Niki hesitates to even describe Jimmy’s disabilities, fiercely protective of his agency. Her current bugbear is a dodgy Troopy refit done on mates’ rates before they left home. Everything is breaking and time in Perth for repairs looms.
What strangers may mistake as one-sided devotion is something more profound. Niki depends on Jimmy just as deeply; his strength in facing daily challenges has helped her find a path through her own grief. “He reminds me that if I push through the pain I’ll be stronger,” she says.
‘When I look at what we’ve done as a team, it makes me smile’
Amid the struggles there is real joy: he loves the Troopy, the roar of the V8 engine signalling new adventure. She sings while he hums along to the music (“He loves it all but pop is his favourite”). He laughs and so do we. “He will change you,” she says. “He has taught me more about living than life itself.”
Niki knows this lifestyle is tenuous. Sore knees mean shorter walks: “It’s getting much harder as I’m getting older.” An injury or fatigue means Jimmy will need a wheelchair. She plans to seek out more quiet places, the risks of isolation worth it for a woman intent on living on her own terms. While Jimmy cannot see all this beauty around them, nor have any say in their path, Niki is certain he is happy.
“There will always be hurt for what Jimmy has missed and what others have that we don’t,” she says. “But when I look at what we’ve done as a team, it makes me smile.”
Back at the Troopy, Jimmy laughs at something only he understands, waiting for the engine to start. He feels around for Kiska, who sits watching over his shoulder, tail flicking. They are heading south now, escaping the coming cyclone season.
Jimmy clutches his mother’s hand as they pull away, moving forward the only way they know: together.
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
