Are You Me?

Two days before I left Perth, I was asking the internet if anyone fancied becoming me.

That was the tone of the post, anyway. The actual problem was more practical. HAA had grown beyond the tidy version of the idea. Sponsors were involved. Supporters were involved. The Heart Foundation, media contacts, parkrun people, friends, followers, and people in other states were all becoming part of it.

And I was about to leave Perth with two support crew, patchy connectivity, and a 5,400 kilometre problem to solve one day at a time.

So I put up a “Situations Vacant” post. The pay was a warm fuzzy glow. The holidays were unlimited and unpaid. The job was, more or less, to help keep Hearts Across Australia functioning while I was busy doing the walking.

It was a ridiculous job description because the real job was ridiculous. Ideally, there would be people in WA, SA, VIC, NSW, and QLD who could help coordinate supporters, local contacts, media, parkrun links, and whatever else appeared once we were out there. One person might even become the central hub. It was the sort of thought that probably belonged in a planning meeting weeks earlier, not in a Facebook post two days before departure.

The sensible version of this would probably have happened weeks earlier. Asking for interstate help two days before setting off was perhaps not the peak of project management. But it did not feel like a grand operational decision at the time. It was more one of those thoughts that arrived in the middle of everything else: I should probably organise something on that front.

What actually developed was not a neat state-by-state structure. It was a Facebook chat group, people putting their hands up at key locations, and support forming while we were already moving. People raised awareness. People found accommodation and supplies. People became delivery contacts for fresh shoes and event shirts. People arranged massage sessions, liaised with local Heart Foundation contacts, helped organise fundraiser sausage sizzles at parkruns, and even mobilised family members from afar.

Looking back, it was a small army of wonderful people that came together in real time, organically.

That afternoon I had asked for an early birthday present: 1,000 page likes by the time I woke up the next morning, on my 46th birthday. We were sitting at 968, needing 32 more. The birthday line was colour, really, a way to make the request feel human. But back then Facebook likes still meant something. Instead of waiting until morning, it happened before the day was out: 1,025 likes, with 150 new people that week.

I also pushed the ask through the old no more mr fat guy crowd, complete with the familiar “Dear minions” opening. That still mattered. HAA had become its own thing by then, but it was still drawing strength from the people who had followed the earlier story: the running, the weight loss, the first marathon, and the belief that ordinary people could take on something that looked far too big from the outside.

It would be easy to dismiss that as a social media number. But two days before departure, it mattered. It meant people were watching. It meant the idea had travelled further than my own head. It meant the thing had a public weight now, and that weight was both exciting and slightly terrifying.

It also meant the workload was becoming more real. People wanted to help. People wanted updates. People wanted to know where we would be and how to connect with us. Once the campervan rolled out, Ben, Ols, and I would not be sitting at laptops with reliable internet and calm diaries. We would be tired, moving, charging devices wherever we could, and trying to make each day work.

And because this was still the final week before HAA, the Richard Branson joke was not finished either. By late evening I was posting a conspiracy theory about Get Nick Fit and Richard’s disappearance. Even an urgent call for volunteer coordinators could not stop the search party.