QBI donor Robyn Hilton distinctly remembers the dark and drizzly evening a hotted-up Cortina rumbled up their steep driveway. A young university student gently helped her husband out of the car, saying, “You’re home now, Peter.” It wasn’t the first time that Peter, who lived with Alzheimer’s disease for 12 years, had wandered and forgotten his way home.
The kindness of strangers
On another occasion Peter was brought home by a Yellow Cab driver who flatly refused to accept payment from a much-relieved Robyn. During the nine years she cared for Peter at home, Robyn delivered countless thank-you gifts to the kind strangers who helped him find his way home. She also rang hospitals, the local police station, and drove around their suburb looking for him.
Eventually, Robyn made the difficult decision to place Peter in residential aged care. When he passed away in 2011, Robyn knew she couldn't change what had happened to their family, but she could do something that might help another family avoid the same path. That determination eventually led her to UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute.
The long journey of caring
According to Robyn, anyone whose life has been touched by dementia knows that caring for someone with the disease is an extraordinary journey.
“It's demanding, challenging and exhausting, but it can also be rewarding," Robyn said.
"No one truly understands the journey until they have lived it. Dementia doesn’t just affect the person diagnosed. It changes the lives of an entire family, and impacts relationships with friends and the community. To watch the slow yet inevitable, and often unpredictable decline, is especially difficult. But you don't do it because it's easy—you do it because you love the person you're caring for.”
Turning loss into hope
For Robyn, supporting research became a way to transform personal loss into something positive for future generations.
“Discovering that QBI researchers were asking the questions families like mine desperately needed answered gave me hope," she said.
"Over the past decade or so, I have seen firsthand how researchers are working to understand why dementia develops, how to diagnose it earlier, and how we can one day prevent or treat these diseases more effectively.”
While Robyn is encouraged by the progress being made, she also knows there is no time to lose. Dementia now the leading cause of death in Australia, making continued investment in research more important than ever.
Investing in a future without dementia
“It’s heartening to know that QBI is home to some of the world’s leading neuroscientists, and that the same goal lies behind every experiment and clinical trial: helping families like ours,” Robyn said.
“I encourage you to support QBI, knowing that you’re helping researchers move us closer to a future where fewer families experience the heartbreak of dementia. Together, we can help make dementia go the way of hotted up Cortinas, and the dinosaurs.”
Donate to the Peter Hilton Alzheimer's Research Endowment Fund this UQ Giving Day and double your impact. Donations received before October 21 2026 will be doubled until matched funds are exhausted.
