Cooktown to Kokoda - Epic 1200km Self Propelled Adventure

An epic 1200km self propelled adventure to raise awareness of breast cancer and to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation

In 2006 Paul Murdoch’s wife Sue died from breast cancer, leaving behind a loving father and two young boys. Sue was everything to her 3 boys and is dearly missed.

Paul and Sue had been childhood sweethearts and following Sue’s death Paul wanted to do something memorable and challenging to remember Sue.

We had tossed up a number of ideas and then Paul heard of a small group of elite athletes who had ridden mountain bikes from Cape Tribulation to Cape York, sea kayaked to PNG and ran the Kokoda trail. They achieved all this in less than two weeks.

Paul was inspired by their adventure and we are now undertaking our own adventure in memory of Sue and with a desire to reach out to the communities of Cape York and the Torres Strait and raise the awareness of breast cancer.

Our plan is to undertake an adventure in three very different disciplines.

Firstly, to ride our mountain bikes some 890 kilometres from Cooktown to Cape York. We will start in the historic town of Cooktown on the east coast of Australia, just north of Cairns. We will make our way through the Lakefield national park, heading in a North westerly direction until we reach the development road. From there we will head almost due north as we tackle the corrugations of the development road and make our way to the northern most point of the Australian continent, Cape York.

Secondly, to sea kayak 160kms to Papua New Guinea . We will tackle the challenging Torres Strait moving from Island to Island, being ever watchful for salt water crocodiles and sharks. With large tidal movements and fast flowing currents the Torres Strait will prove very challenging.

Finally, we will walk the 96kms of the Kokoda trail. Following in the footsteps of our legendary soldiers who fought so valiantly, we will tackle the very challenging conditions of the Kokoda Trail, which is one of the most challenging walks on the planet.

All up we anticipate this will take us 30 days. As we visit local communities and stop at the Islands of the Torres Strait we hope to raise awareness of the risks of breast cancer.

To donate money to this very worthy cause please follow the link below.

DONATE TO THE MCGRATH FOUNDATION