General News
23 November, 2023
Community rallies for Ben
“The odds we were given were so bad but if it was a car crash, we would never have been able to do any of this.” That’s the mindset of Dunluce farmers Ben and Leah Weir, who were married just over a week after Ben, 30, was given a terminal...
“The odds we were given were so bad but if it was a car crash, we would never have been able to do any of this.”
That’s the mindset of Dunluce farmers Ben and Leah Weir, who were married just over a week after Ben, 30, was given a terminal cancer diagnosis.
After developing a headache and blurred vision on an otherwise normal day at the family farm, Ben paid a visit to his GP entirely unaware that in a few hours he’d be rushed to Melbourne in an ambulance.
Scans revealed a tumour in Ben’s sinus that was causing his blurred vision and headaches.
On November 1 Ben was told he had a NUT carcinoma, a very rare and aggressive type of cancer with a low survival rate. He was given a life expectancy of six to eight months, or a 30 percent chance to live two years if he chose to fight the cancer.
“It’s a very odd feeling to be given news like that,” he said.
“If it was Leah who was sick like this I wouldn’t cope so in a sense I’m glad it is me, I worry more for my family than myself.”
The couple were unaware how serious the tumour was at first and had started talking about their wedding day, however the diagnosis accelerated these plans rapidly.
“We didn’t know just how bad the tumour was at first and Leah suggested we should get married in February when her granddad is visiting from England,” Ben said.
“My response was that you just can’t organise a wedding in 90 days — it can’t be done.”
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
“We’re pretty casual people, we didn’t really have a plan to get married soon but when we found out how sick Ben was, getting married is the one thing we wanted to do,” Leah said.
The wedding was made possible with an outpouring of support from the community, highlighting just how many lives the two have touched over the years.
A whopping $89,000 was raised through community donations on gofundme to support the pair and help cover the costs of the wedding, honeymoon and medical treatment, while dozens of other community members gave their time to help set the Weir farm up for the wedding on November 11 — a day the pair will never forget.
“I think having the wedding saved so many people because if we were shattered and upset by the news, we would have had 400 people who were devastated,” Leah said.
“Because we decided to make the most of it and celebrate it, it changed everyone’s mindset.
“It was everything we had hoped for and more and the support has just been so good, it’s what the farming community is all about.
“We don’t see each other all the time but we don’t need to — we know we’re always there.
“People have come out of the woodwork to do anything and everything for us and I can’t thank them enough, it truly means so much to us.”
The wedding was a fitting celebration for the couple, who met seven years ago in a remote shearing shed on the other side of the country.
“We kind of just got stuck together and it was the best thing to happen — there weren’t a lot of young people in that part of the world and we were both there for the experience of it all,” Leah said.
Ben and Leah spent the next six months together working in remote shearing sheds around the eastern wheatbelt of Western Australia, before Ben had to return home to the family farm.
Two years of flights across the country to see each other ensued before Ben joined Leah, her sheep dog Moss, horse Dusty and 24 prize chickens on the 3306 kilometre trip across the Nullabor to Dunluce.
In the five years since arriving in the district, Leah has well and truly become a local and an asset to the community, working at Crameri’s in Maryborough and spending her spare time working with Ben on the Weir farm.
The couple are optimistic about the future and say the time they have together is “an incredible gift”, with Ben undergoing surgery to remove parts of the tumour on Monday and a lengthy road of chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy to follow.
“I can’t believe I’m about to watch someone go from being so healthy to so sick, it is going to be hard,” Leah said.
“Looking back on it, we’ve always lived life to the fullest — we’ve always gone and done things together.
“It gives me peace of mind that I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
“We’re fortunate we’ve had that chance — we saw the time frame we were given as an incredible gift.”
