Every man and his wallaby will tell you Australia is HUGE, and they’re right: it’s the biggest island in the world and the flattest, driest inhabited continent on earth *. To walk across this massive 4000km continent would only take a little over 30 days, with the slight caveat of having to walk for 24 hours per day. So that’s why we plan on riding motorbikes!

On July 27^th Justin Whitehall and I plan on heading from Melbourne to Perth, taking in the Great Ocean Road of Victoria, skirting around the Great Australian Bight and across the mighty Nullabor, finally hitting Western Australia’s green south-west. The trip will take about 10 days…perhaps longer if we break down, or shorter if we break down.

Getting away from the bustle of the city for a few days is normally enough to recharge the batteries, let alone doing something extraordinary and travelling across Australia. Whilst work, social, family and economic commitments can be stressful, it is always important to unwind and step-back a bit from work life. Most of us are lucky in that when we feel down, we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back into the saddle, but 1 in 5 Australians struggle when feeling down, and suffer intense depression or anxiety for extended periods. This is not a charity event as such, but it is a great chance to raise awareness of depression and anxiety in the workplace and we hope to raise $2500 for beyondblue.

beyondblue is one of Telstra’s community partners, and f you would like to donate to beyondblue, please visit our donation page at www.everydayhero.com.au/long_way_west.

For us, this trip will be a fun adventure that hopefully we can recount without too many horror stories in years to come, but by journeying across Australia we hope to highlight the importance of a work-life balance, the importance of unwinding and getting rid of the stress when you can, and what better way to do it than experiencing the great outdoors on the back of a motorcycle with someone you’ll learn to hate after only 50km. To quote Justin “as long as we keep going East we’ll be fine!”. Erm… let the adventure begin!

*taking the old school approach that Australia can be both an island and a continent.