I guess I've also been waiting for the right moment to reminisce and re-live the whole event. Even now, it's like it happened to someone else, someone faster & better than I, and I wanted a bit of quiet time to think the whole thing through.

So this report will be a long one (that I can read when I'm aged & toothless). If you're not inclined to read it in its entirety, here's a summary:

The GP was huge for all of us. The whole team was challenged and stretched like you wouldn't believe & we had some gusts of luck & some things that didn't go our way. But we kept it together, and we stood on the grid of a world championship event. I crashed gloriously in the end, but we achieved our goals, and went away changed by it.

Partly, this event was so special to me because I remember failing my bike test 16 years ago (I crashed) & it seems to me I've come incomprehensibly far since then.

Partly it was because a few people told us the life of a wildcard was an unhappy one, & that we were doomed, & would struggle to qualify. They were right, of course, and at these times it was sheer bloody-mindedness that kept us going.

But mostly, it was the strength of friendship I found everywhere, both before the GP & since, that singled this one out. A few special mentions: Jenny & Peter Taplin offered me their kit when mine looked like not arriving. The significance of this only becomes clear when you remember I finished the smallest whisker in front of Peter to take the last wildcard slot. My team from Deutsche Bank worked loyally around my absences & organised food & promo materials. Peter Galvin, my partner & rival, organised & fitted my kit. Gregby Lowrie tirelessly filled our knowledge gaps as GP novices, & he & Kate Woods provided comfort & shelter when the van got broken into. All the Aussie titles marshalls & officials went out of their way to try to calm our nerves, and more than occasionally picked me up & dusted me off. And lastly, the crowd's support was just amazing. It heartened all the wildcards but, I think, me especially.

The Team - My own team comprised as usual of my technician Geoff Heard & girlfriend Libby, the latter celebrating her pregnancy with a very exhausting weekend. Fellow 125 competitors Paul Campbell & Raelene d'Elboux offered me not only their B kit, but also themselves, & I can never thank them enough for their unstinting support & intelligent approach to the puzzles that beset us, and for Paul's role as event crew chief. Kerrie Hains, my friend & personal trainer, has shared this dream with me since '98, and she flew down to stand on the grid with us.

The Background - We didn't really have a prepossessing start, as none of our testing went according to plan. For our first test, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne, picked the bike up from Jerry's workshop, & then did another 200km to get to PI, making a solid 18 hours in the van. Then I got up 4 hours later, & went to the track &, surprisingly, crashed. Duh.

I pulled similar stupidity for two more tests, & generally wasted tyres & gas, until I realised that only some leave without pay would get me where I needed to go, especially when I had all the new uniforms, fairings, stickers, tyres & press packs to organise. The Sydney Morning Herald had done a piece on me; and Geoff & I had been on the news, so I felt like the poster child for the wildcard effort & was determined to do it justice, at least in the presentation stakes.

There was a lot of early talk about my gender, but luckily the SMH article had set the tone & chosen instead to major on the unlikeliness of a 37 year old banker on the brink of starting a GP career.

I picked Paul up in Goulburn on Tuesday & we made good time to Melbourne, stopping at Greg & Kate's to pick up some parts for the Men in Black (fellow wildcards Peter Galvin & Andrew Brooks). We passed a happy couple of hours, oblivious to the fact that someone outside was smashing the van's rear window & making off with Paul's video camera & all his other possessions.

It was a short drive to the Police station, where we explained what we were doing with all those tyres anyway. As I walked in to make my statement, the copper burst out laughing. That kind of reception can make a person neurotic, but it turned out he'd seen Katja Poensgen on TV & she'd said she gone for 250s because 125 riders are scrawny & have to diet all the time. And I'd walked in clutching a McOz burger like it was my dearest friend. I explained that worry & exhaustion kept me thin. Later, I was to meet Katja in the ladies' loo.

Set up & scrutineering - As we drove into PI the next day, the familiar surroundings were covered with flags, banners & posters carrying the event's slogan "You Can't Beat the World's Best". Talk about a subliminal message to me. I felt sick. "It's just a motorbike race," I said to Paul, "We know how to do motorbike races". But it wasn't him I was trying to reassure.

We set up a gorgeous pit, thanks to Northside Signs' generous gift of 6m long pit dividers which gave us an oasis of peace in the open tent that serves as the wildcard area. This tent was to spend much of the weekend with water sluicing through it as it sits on the down slope of the paddock & cops all the runoff.

Then setback number 2 occurred. I'd not worried too much that Nutec, my fuel supplier, hadn't answered my emails, as traditionally, wildcards get fuel at the track. But it turned out that they were in financial difficulty, and had bailed from the event. I asked to buy some from Elf, & Jacques gave an eloquent Gallic shrug to indicate that he'd not bought any. Oh, great, what now? We'd made it to the event, & now we had nothing to put in the bike.

"I guess I won't be riding, then", I said soulfully, since French is fortunately the language of my childhood. "Oh, but you are Francaise!" he exclaimed. I explained that, au contraire, I was simply fuel-less. A national bond having been formed, Jacques swung into action & sorted me out some AGIP from the very helpful, very Italian Italjet team, & periodically introduced me to various French media. I knew all these guys were national heroes, but I was shamefully not up on French racers. I sort of regretted not doing an interview for French Eurosport, but we were too busy fixing crash damage …

Thursday we had to scrutineer. The regulars get that done in their pits, & it was my first exposure to the real world of GP. I felt terribly awkward & self conscious as we wheeled Angel past all the factory teams' garages to the scrutineering bay, since I was wearing my leathers & getting stared at by curious team personnel. I was a bit happier when I stood on the scales & came to 58.9kg with all my gear on. Angel was a porker though at 74.3kg without its tank, so we cruised over the combined weight limit of 130kg.

The wildcard briefing was another tense affair, basically centred on making sure we didn't act like complete dorks, however the premise that we might made us all even more nervous than before. Our one-event FIM licences were ceremonially handed over to us. Another piece of evidence I'll keep all my life.

Friday Practice & Qualifying - Then Friday was on us. I didn't feel ready for it, & it was a great relief that I had to run in the rebuilt engine with the new kit & thus had an excuse to go slowly.

There was a really strong wind blowing & the session was absolute carnage, crashing all the way around the circuit, waved flags from Turn 1 through to Siberia. Angel was taking 10 different lines around T1 from the gusts & actually head-shaking with the buffeting through Hayshed. I just hung on grimly & kept going round. Some of the championship front runners fell off.

Wow, I thought, these GP guys really are hard cases, indifferent to their own safety. I was impressed, until I heard some of them talking afterwards & realised they were just as scared as I was. Many of the teams attacked their fairings with a drill, to provide less of a solid surface for the wind. We, of course, didn't have any fairings we could spare to mutilate.

On the last lap, I lost the front at MG, slid off & remounted. I thought it was just me being stupid, or a gust of wind or something. But it was to have relevance later.

Friday afternoon was the first qualifying session & it was wet. I passed Cecchinello!

Then, a mere 5 laps into the session, I lost the front again, this time at Siberia & there was no logical explanation for it as I was teetering around very cautiously. We'd taken advice on our suspension, & gone up from a 6.5kg spring to a 7kg, raised the overall ride height of the bike, but also raised the rear. It was looking really like the spring was too aggressive for my style & affecting the weight distribution of the bike as it came off the brakes & on the gas. Or maybe it was just the ride height. Great way to find out, & a conundrum to be solved in our shrinking supply of practice time.

Mind you, I was totally pleased to see that I'd qualified in front of quite a few GP regulars, being Caffiero, Talmasci, Araujo, & Bataille, together with fellow wildcard Peter Galvin, even though the track was drying & the fastest laps were all set at the end of the session. I was a bit surprised that the riders didn't seem to be going harder, given that PI's unpredictable weather could dish anything up the following day.

Back in wildcardland, Jay Taylor was in 24th & Andrew Brooks a courageous 17th. Casey Stoner was in 7th, but he's not really an Aussie wildcard, his parents having shrewdly moved to the UK where his astonishing talent can develop in an environment where young racers are well supported.

In the meantime, poor Libby was faced with double doses of repainting my leathers, huddled in the back of the freezing pit. Water was coursing freely though it & we'd had to get everything off the floor, the giant wheelie bin lid we liberated came in handy ... Only the tea & the need to keep on the move repairing Angel stopped us seizing up with the peculiar chill that only Phillip Island can deliver.

Saturday Practice & Qualifying - We'd had some dire predictions about the kit. It had only arrived the day I left for Melbourne, & we had no idea whether it would be a boomer, or make my strong, reliable, standard bike finicky & hard to jet. As it turned out, it needed jet sizes around 4 sizes larger than the old engine, & was more of a screamer than the grunty standard motor. But it was going like a stung rat &, according to Paul's det counter ticking quietly to itself, we weren't getting the detonation that's plagued owners of the earlier version of this year's kit.

That said, I was scandalously slow in the morning free practice. The bike felt like it was sliding & gripping repeatedly in the fast sweepers of Turns 1 & 12, and it was so extreme that I wasn't confident to get full on the gas in these crucial spots.

What had happened to my reliable Angel? Was it a characteristic of the harder compound tyres we were told we'd have to run to go the distance of the full GP, or was it the troublesome suspension settings? At this rate, we wouldn't qualify. Next door to us, Andrew Brooks was struggling with similar symptoms.

Paul & I went into a huddle, & the decision: go with what you know. We kept the rear ride height adjustment to make sure Angel's tail didn't drag, but we went less aggressive with the forks. We binned the 7kg spring, & slapped on a set of soft B compound tyres. This was it, as the weather was perversely dry and sunny, and all the times would wipe our provisional qualifying from Friday. Now, or just go home.

And then I just tried my very, very hardest. My pit board was showing my time & the best time so that I could figure out if I was on the pace. But I was so very worried about another crash & spooked in case the handling was off that I inched around, eyes on stalks. I was lucky to catch a tow & put in a 1'44'2, the same time I'd done unassisted & with a standard bike, 18 months before.

Then everyone slowed down to a crawl, & started looking over their shoulders. It was the last 10 minutes of qualifying. I'd never seen this before, but I knew that large groups would form to tow each other around. Plus which, Jay Taylor & Peter Galvin were slowing up too, which was enough for me. I made a lap & a half in first gear. Then a couple of guys started to get their heads down, blowing past exiting Siberia. I decided that if I wanted a tow down the straight, I'd better jump to it straight away. So I got on the gas ... & Angel just died, ran out of fuel as we'd omitted to top up during my scheduled stop earlier in the session. Peter told me later that around 10 bikes behind me scattered like minnows, some only fractionally avoiding me, all hard on the charge.

As the marshalls helped me push the bike to the side of the track, my name was called by familiar voices: my friends Annette & Peter, who'd arrived that day. When I went to talk to then, friendly spectators joined in. Together, we all listened to the commentator calling the last minutes of practice and speculating whether I & Andrew Brooks were in or out. I held my breath, & it seems everyone else held theirs, too, because when he announced "She's in!" there was a loud cheer, and one of the guys leant over the fence & shouted, "We're with you, Cath". I was so relieved, and so proud, that I burst into tears.

The bike was in one piece: we were at a loose end, with finally some time to draw breath & to look around us. Our golden glow was dented by the fact that Andrew Brooks had not made the cut, they'd persevered with the harder suspension & the bike had not been handling. Peter Galvin was still struggling with programmable ignition teething problems, & said he probably wouldn't have qualified if Nobby Ueda hadn't helped out with a tow, whilst Jay had qualified 29th & Casey Stoner 19th. I was on the last grid spot, 34th, and I couldn't have cared less.

Morning Warm up - Morning warm up was notable for Paul figuring out how to adjust my troublesome new speed shifter. Yay, we have automation - until then, I'd been having to shut the throttle off fractionally to change. I sheepishly did a plug chop, just to make sure our jetting was right, no one in GPs needs to because they have telemetry & I felt like such a peasant. On previous occasions, I felt so self-conscious that I'd pretended to be doing a practice start & pulled off again.

I'd done a Channel 10 piece with Nobby Ueda, & I'd asked him to wave at me as he went by, which he duly did as I was running in a new piston up Lukey Heights. He'd actually been very serious and advised me to watch out for the "brue frag".

Don't worry, I'd assured him, we have the most comprehensive system on earth for letting me know how near the leading and second groups were, and how many riders were in each. There was no way I wanted to become abruptly famous as some wood duck who stuffed up a good race.

We had one last stress: what tyres to fit for the race? Everyone else was running C&D compound hard tyres, but after looking at our Bs, Dunlop agreed with some astonishment that a B front would probably hold out & a C rear be more than adequate. Then we put on our new carbon/ kevlar fairing & I wrote myself a note saying "Don't Give Up" on duct tape & stuck it to my tank.

The Race - Then the race was on us. As usual, the Petronas technicians came to stare as we bumped the bike (yup, I really am going to get on it & ride off) & the French photographer reeled off some snaps.

The sighting lap passed without incident, and there we were, on the grid of a world championship event, Qantas red and white flags everywhere and colour coded brolly dollies - even one with a flag with my number on to show me my grid spot - the works. TV cameras stalked through the field. We put on the warmers, hugged the Galvins next to us and wished them a good race, & waited, shaded by the umbrellas of fiery redhead Raelene and willowy Kerrie.

I noticed the new chain had flung some lube onto the back wheel & asked Paul if we could wipe it off. He started to do so, then leapt to his feet, said a very rude word twice & buried his head in his hands in shock.

"What?" I said. "There's no axle nut on the rear wheel!" he replied. As coolly, really, as I could muster, I walked to the other side of the bike & looked. He was right. I thought quickly. "Get the one from the Brooks' bike" I said, & Paul galloped off.

In the meantime, the umbrella girls were being cleared from the grid, along with crews & tyre warmers. The officials flapped their hands at us and couldn't delay any longer, so, with one last look at the grid of an event I'd dreamed of & worked so hard for, I hopped over pit wall.

I was surprisingly calm. The event was so much more bizarre than anything I could have dreamed up that I didn't have it in me to feel let down. The rest of the team however was in frantic action, unbeknownst to me. I have a photo of Raels, running down pit lane, white as a ghost, Angel propped up against a pit bay wall behind her.

The bikes came around again, to grid for the race. Someone grabbed my elbow - I don't know who - "we've found it, they'll let you start from pit lane, get down there".

Mark Bracks asked me what happened, & I was too dazed to do anything but blurt out the truth. Down at Turn 1, Peter Brooks started to make a dash for the pits …as it turned out, our own axle nut was still on the bike bench.

The friendly IRTA official saw my note to myself on the tank, pointed at it, grinned & gave me a thumbs up. The lights went green, the field pulled away in a haze of smoke. The pit lane marshall stepped aside and waved me out. I made a smooth start, not, as I'd feared, bogging the bike, & the safety car pulled aside to let me past. Oh dear, not quite what I'd envisaged my first GP to be like.

But now I was racing, I just had to keep my head down, get into a rhythm. About 6-8 seconds in front, Peter was having a struggle with Araujo, and the rest of the field was sorting itself out and pulling inexorably out of sight. I'd be setting up for Turn 1 & see them coming out of Southern Loop, mostly.

But I was most definitely catching up Peter, lap by lap, and finally, on about Lap 8 or 9, I blew past him down the straight. Then, of course, my riding got more anxious & ragged. Peter picked up his pace and we diced for a sustained period. I had to look around if I wanted to see where he was. Our pit board system, so elaborate about who might be lapping me, had totally failed to consider than anyone might actually be behind me. Ironically, working back from my lap times, I wouldn't have been lapped anyway.

Finally, on lap 14 of 23, he went inside me at Turn 1, and I went straight back round the outside exiting Southern Loop. But then he went wide, and I thought we were going to touch. Andrew Brooks, spectating, thought we had and that this provoked my crash. But in fact I'd worried about hitting Peter and as a reflex had pulled on my front brake. Not a sound plan when doing 200kph banked over in 6th, and probably not one I'd have tried with any rider other than my partner.

I slid for the longest time, but when I came to a halt, the sky, ground & track were all where they should have been and I could see Angel lying on the grass, mostly in one piece. As a bonus, apart from a few wee aches, I was totally unhurt. Peter droned by in the background.

Once I'd organised myself, I made the decision not to watch the race from there, but to let my pit know I was OK, and hitched a ride back with Heinz from Hartwell Club, who was officiating as a boundary rider. It was slow going, because we kept getting stopped for autographs, which baffled me but which I truly appreciated as a compliment.

The Aftermath - As soon as I got back to the pit bay, Raels ran up, "you have to come with me to see Peter!" She looked shaken.

"Where is he?" I asked. "He's OK, but … he's in the med. centre". I ran straight there, and there was Peter, in a collar, his eyes vaguely searching around the room for a clue as to where he was. The paramedics were cutting his leathers off him. In spite of early speculation that he'd been hit by a seagull, a not uncommon occurrence at PI, his bike had seized violently the lap after I'd spotted him, and he'd been spat headfirst into a ripple strip.

By the end of the day he hadn't improved sufficiently for them to release him and was airlifted to hospital in Melbourne for a CAT scan. I stood trying to talk to my sister, over from the UK, whom I'd finally met up with, whilst the pit was dismantled around me by my team, trying to get my head straight.

Our event became prosaic again, back to what we knew, packing the van, clearing the pit, and thus ended the 2001 GP. All ends well: Peter recovered fully after a few weeks of whimsical vagueness but has no idea about the crash or the week following it, Angel was barely scratched, and the whole team went away with memories to spare. Paul swore he'd never again aspire to being a wildcard, though of course this didn't stop him upgrading his own 125 shortly thereafter.

The GP was huge. We were exceptionally privileged to do what we did. We were lucky, and we also made some good decisions when our inexperience threatened to overcome us. As a team, we were challenged constantly to be better than we'd ever been. I crashed valiantly, but I battled to the end. And we achieved our goals, and the experience changed all of us.

We had the time of our lives and we can't wait for the opportunity to do it all again … next year.