Changing Tides Festival

When we found out that 5 of Cameron's favourite bands were playing in one festival at Kiama, we had to attend, even if it meant a 10 hour drive.

Concert for Cam

Remembering, honouring and celebrating Cameron on what would have been his 23rd birthday.

Drag Bingo

An event organised by a great friend of the family, with support from others, to raise funds for the cause. Thank you Sharon.

Tree planting at Burleigh Heads

With thanks to the community and the GCCC we were fortunate enough to have a tree planted in Cameron's memory in the place he loved to spend time at.

22-28th September 2025

Remembering Cam one year on.

The month started with a court date, with not much advancement. Then we were meant to be having a Walk for Awareness with QHVSG (Queensland Homicide Victims Support Group) but it was postponed again due to weather.

Then Sonia, myself and Tayla spent various amounts of time down and around Burleigh during September, particularly from 22-28th.

The "tough week" started at 2am on the 22nd. Sonia had told me she wanted to be at the location where the "alleged" assault took place, at the time it happened (around 2:20am on the 22nd September 2024). So, we went down in the Cam Van with Murphy, laid some flowers and sat there for a while. It was different to how we thought it would feel. We had spent weeks being anxious and dreading that moment, but in the end, there was just a kind of hollow emptiness. We didn't really feel much to be honest. We just sat and talked. We decided to walk up to the headland with the dog.

We passed the main beach just before 4am, so the dog had the entire beach to run around on. We walked up to the headland in the dark, realised it was still another hour until sunrise, so we walked back down and drove up in the Cam Van. We unpacked our chairs and had something to eat and watched the sunrise at 5:37am. There were surfers surfing with head-torches on while it was still dark, and then whales, stand-up paddle boarders and other things to enjoy as the day broke.

We then headed back down to Cammy's Tree, and set up our table and chairs. We had a banner made up months ago, as part of the Cameron Duce Forever 22 Memorial Association, and we put that up too. We also had some stubby coolers made up with information on them, and candles and some other information which we laid out on the table. We were nervous about it, and we felt uneasy and reluctant. It was not easy and we felt very vulnerable emotionally to put ourselves out there with Cam's sad story. It was a very, very big step into something that we had no idea how it would go.

Those first few hours were very tough. And then people started to stop, look and talk with us. it took hours to happen, but as the week rolled on we had dozens of people stop to offer condolences, share their stories and talk about some of the positive outcomes for the future. It became inspiring and it gave us some hope knowing there were many who cared and many more who wanted us to push forward with our cause.

We had all sorts of people stop to talk, about all sorts of things. Sonia and I also had time to talk to each other about how it was going and we started to formulate some goals and structure for future plans. Basically, we came up with our "three tier" system; Past, present, Future.

The past was remembering and honouring Cam, making sure he is not forgotten and his name, personality and big smile lives on in peoples memories.

The present was us doing what we are doing; raising awareness. This will continue as a communication conduit between ourselves and those who reach out to us, and those that we reach out to.

And the future; what we can do to bring about change. Changes to peoples thinking, changes to how the act rather than the outcome is defined and applied and changes to the community of Burleigh with more lighting,security cameras, policing and greater community engagement about Coward Strikes and random violence in general.

On the Saturday night we had about 20 of Cam's mates come down, and a dozens of our family and friends across the day. Not bad considering the footy that was on! So we really want tot hanks all those who turned up at any time, some who came down many times, everyone who stopped to talk with us, and we hope everyone got something positive from the time spent down at Cammy's Tree, just sitting or talking with us and others.

By the end of the week we had given out about 100 stubby coolers, countless candles, and most of the 500 information cards we had printed prior to the week. We had dozens of people write in our "visitors" book and many people took the time to visit the website and leave us a message. We thank all those people, your comments and thoughts, shared with us, really mean a lot to us. Thank you.

All up, it was still very tough, mentally and emotionally exhausting, but we feel it was worthwhile and the right thing to do. For Cam, for his mates, and for the community.

Thank you to everyone who got involved in any way, shape or form. It helped make the week feel like we all did something positive for Cam.

As some/most of you would have been aware, September was the first anniversary of the passing of Cam. We had a few things on for the month, and it was quite an emotionally demanding and taxing month. While we did very little physically, we were exhausted daily in that last/past week.