Although he is a Queensland citizen, Sensei Trevor Roberts is an honorary Numurkah local through his work with the Shotokan Karate club.
For over 50 years, Trevor has been committed to martial arts, beginning his journey in the UK in 1972.
“I’ve been a professional instructor now for over 30 years,” he said.
“So when I came to Australia I joined a karate club, and in that 30 years I met up with a couple of guys from down in Tasmania that wanted to join me.
“I used to go down to Tasmania and teach these guys and grade them and so on and so forth.
“One of them was actually Steve Ahern.”
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Steve Ahern is the sensei at Shotokan Karate Budokai Victoria, a Numurkah-based karate dojo.
He began training in Tasmania’s capital city but has since moved to northern Victoria.
“I've been training in karate for a long time, and I learned the craft in Hobart,” Steve said.
“I started the (Numurkah) club there three years ago because, long story short, COVID-19 hit, so my wife and I decided to relocate the kids to Shepparton.
“There were no shotokan clubs, which is the style of karate that we do, but I started teaching my daughters in the backyard in the summer, so I thought, this is not going to work in winter.”
After putting an expression of interest on the Numurkah Facebook page, he had over a dozen kids show up.
“And then we started it,” he said.
“I teach the same stuff that we did in Tasmania and then have Trevor come down at the end of each year and do grading, and he loves it and I love it too.”
In 2023, everything was like every other year until Steve got a phone call from Trevor.
“Before he came here, he goes, ‘Oh, I’ve just got some news, everything’s good, but I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer’.”
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Trevor had a pimple on his breast, that’s all.
“I had this lump underneath my right breast for maybe six months,” he said.
“I thought it was only about five millimetres, like a little pimple, a pea.
“About October last year, my son rang me up, and he was crying.
“My son is about 45 years of age, with a mortgage, three children and runs a business, and he said that ‘I’ve got a melanoma stage four on my back’, and he was crying, and he said, ‘I don’t know what to do’.
“The doctor has taken it out, ripped it right out of his back, and he said ‘My life is finished’, and I’m tearing up at the other end of the phone.”
After his conversation, Trevor said he felt lost, and he was looking for any way he could do something.
“I can remortgage my house, I’ll look after his children, my daughter will help and all that sort of stuff, and then I thought, okay, the only thing I can do is pray to God,” he said.
He wouldn’t classify himself as a religious man, but what else was a father to do when faced with the thought of losing his son?
“I put a lot of thought into the prayer and I said my son, he’s too young, can we swap over? I don’t mind jumping in his place,” Trevor said.
“That’s how simple it was.
“A couple of days later I went down to see the doctor. I thought, I’ll go and check this lump out, and I did because of my son.
“I just went down to check them, and he said we’d better go straight down and get a scan.”
The results were in, but Trevor was advised not to hear them alone.
“I’ll bring my daughter,” he said.
“I turn up at the doctor’s surgery, and he’s just talking away there, and I’m sort of listening, but not listening, and that’s why you need someone else to go with you.
“He said, you’ve got breast cancer and I was like, what? You’re kidding me, it can’t happen to me.
“This is not happening.”
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“Breast cancer in men is rare, but it happens,” GV Health breast care nurse Michelle Parish said.
“There’s sometimes a misconception that it only affects men with ‘man boobs’, but this is absolutely not true.
“Over the years, I’ve probably treated five or six men in our local community here at GV Health that have breast cancer.”
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“It was a shock, but my initial thought was, well, you probably shouldn’t come down like, you know, you’re going to have, you know, appointments and things,” Steve said to Trevor.
“He goes, ‘No, no, I’ve had all that’, his first surgery already booked in, so it was nothing he could really do.
“He just lives karate, and he wanted to come down, and I wasn’t going to stop him.
“He’s pretty tough and stubborn, too, so if the cancer would want to go in anyone’s body, it picked the wrong one.”
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“We found a lymph node, and it is cancerous, and it’s alive.”
The words of a nurse to Trevor after a surgery in November 2023.
He had woken up after a few hours under anaesthetic on the other side of a surgery with a sore chest.
“We’ll go in there after the new year, so I thought, yeah, that’s fine, no problem,” Trevor said.
“I said, look, I booked an overseas trip, can I still go?”
His doctors signed off on it, but not all was well.
“I go over to Thailand, and I meet up with some friends, some karate friends who I know over there, and then after four or five days, I notice my boob started swelling again. Really bad,” he said.
“After 10 days, I rang my daughter. I was sick. I was really bad.
“My heart rate was 112, when it’s usually around 65, and I know something’s wrong now.”
He landed in Adelaide and went straight to the emergency room.
He spent the night, and then the next day a “cola bottle” of “gunk” was drained from his chest.
Two days later he had his surgery. He goes under, they take out the lymph node, and he wakes up the next day.
However, he had to make a choice. Walk out now and hope for the best, or have chemo and radiation.
“My daughter and my son said, ‘Look, Dad, we’d like you to have it, but we know it’s your choice’ and I thought well, okay. Let’s go,” he said.
“About a month after the operation, I’ve had the chemo, which was really bad.
“It has knocked me around like most people, my fingernails fell out, my bones were hurting, but I still kept going back to the Karate Club every day as much as I could, trying to teach and watching and people used to say, ‘Why do you keep going back?’”
He put it down to the energy in the dojos. He said he even appreciated the smell of the dirty socks.
He got over the chemo, and he went to see the doctor.
“She turned around, and she looked on the computer, and she said, ‘You are now cancer-free’ and my eyes just dropped, my knees went. I couldn’t believe it,” Trevor said.
“The two nurses are hanging on to me, and I’ve got tears coming out of my eyes.
“She said, ‘You don’t have to come back any more’.
“As I’m walking out, all the nurses in the oncologist just stopped and started to clap me out, which is a thing they do. It was absolutely brilliant, you know?”
It wasn’t over just yet.
“Then it was down to the radiation. So again, I’m thinking, do I need it?,” Trevor said.
“I’ve already been told I’m clear, but that it might come back. Okay, we’ll go and give it a go.”
He had a total of 25 hits of radiation, after 20 it starts to burn and most people tap out at 10.
“I’m walking out the door to sign off, so to speak, and the lady said, ‘There’s the bell there. You can ring it’,” he said.
“There’s this bell on the side of the wall and I thought, I’m going to rip this thing off the wall. I’m going to smash it.
“I’m walking up to the bell, and I’ve looked over to the waiting room and I could see the six women all sat there with no hair and looking so gaunt and frail, and I just I couldn’t smash it.
“But afterwards I went outside to the car park, and I’m fist-pumping up in the air, giving it all that, and I looked out and there’s a building site.
“They’re building a new hospital at the side of the hospital, and I saw all these guys looking at me, all giving me the thumbs up.
“That was my journey.”
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Steve’s friend of many years has beaten cancer, but he wanted to do more than say congratulations and move on.
This October, his karate students trained in pink belts and all money from purchasing them went to the Breast Cancer Foundation, ending with Wear It Pink Day on Friday, October 18.
“It’s hard to buy pink karate belts and, in fact, I ended up buying white belts and dyeing them,” Steve said.
Trevor wasn’t finished either, now being an activist in the breast cancer space, sharing his story and inspiring others.
“People were saying, ‘But do, do you feel embarrassed about being a man having breast cancer?’ No way, mate. I want to get it out of here,” he said.
He regularly does talks in front of crowds of hundreds and has raised thousands of dollars for the Breast Cancer Foundation.
So if you take one thing from Trevor's story, it’s go and get checked.
“To all men out there, get checked. Like, just check your body, even while you’re looking in the mirror and flexing, you know, just please check,” Steve said.
“Just like women, if you notice any changes — whether it’s a lump, skin changes or nipple discharge — don’t ignore it,” nurse Michelle Parish said.
“If you feel funny around your breasts or your boobs or your pectorals, go and get it checked out,” Trevor said.
To donate to the Breast Cancer Foundation, head to nbcf.org.au