Melbourne 2018 "Put Yout Foot Down" Walk for Pancreatic Cancer

As we set up for our 8th annual Melbourne walk, hot air balloons drifted across the city skyline and rowers skimmed across the Yarra. The sun shone all morning and we had perfect conditions for our wonderful Melbourne walkers who turned up in all their purple glory to collectively raise funds and awareness for Pancreatic Cancer.

The city of Melbourne helped promote the walk by lighting up the Melbourne GPO in purple in the week leading up to the walk and AAMI Park was awash with purple on Saturday, May 5.

This year we welcomed the support of the Melbourne City Southbank Lions Club and we would like to thank Kirsty, Amy, Sophie, Steve and Mel for all their help and support as this is always one of our most popular stalls. We are so grateful to the Northcote Lions Club who kindly let us use their BBQ. The Beak & Sons sausages, as always, were in big demand and we had to send out for more bread to feed our hungry walkers (and the odd rowers who were very excited we were set up next door to them).

As muk haircare, who always supply prizes for our winners at all the walks around the country, are Melbourne based, they approached us with the idea of providing a muk team to spray hair purple for a gold coin donation. We jumped at the idea and “team muk” were continually in a purple cloud as this proved to be a very popular addition. Not only did we have some amazing outfits we had hair to match. We also had a team of face painters completing the look.

We would like to thank the team from Coffee United for making coffee all morning and also Vittoria Coffee for providing the coffee beans and coffee cups to ensure the maximum could be donated to the Foundation.

Our merchandise stall was positively groaning with Avner Foundation products! This year, along with our caps, t-shirts and dog leads we also added our brand new “walk socks”, keep cups, beanies and bangles! Nicole manned the store for us again this year and was positively run off her feet. Her mum, Heather, was also lending a helping hand and selling her very own cookbook which she created in the memory of her husband, Tom, who lost his battle to Pancreatic Cancer in 2016.

George Calombaris provided his support again this year and proved to all or us that he is not only passionate about food but also spreading the word of the Foundation and the importance of raising funds for Pancreatic Cancer. As always, he was inundated with requests for photos.

We also had the pleasure of having Patrick Kisnorbo a former Australian international football player who is currently an assistant youth team coach at A-League club Melbourne City on hand for photos and a vigorous pre-walk warm up.

At every walk we ask one of our grant recipients to update us on their developments and we were very lucky to have Professor Brendan Jenkins from the Hudson Institute of Medical Research on hand to remind us of the importance of the walks in raising much needed funds for ongoing research.

A very big congratulations to our highest fundraisers and best dressed children, adults and dogs! We certainly received many looks from passersby as our walkers made their way along the Yarra.

Caroline thanked our wonderful Melbourne Event Coordinator, Lynne, who started the Melbourne walk in 2011. We would like to thank Lynne for all her efforts over the years. She will be greatly missed! Luckily, we have an incredible team of volunteers in Melbourne led by Lisa and Vassie who will make sure that nothing is overlooked in 2019.

Last, but definitely not least, we have to thank our wonderful corporate sponsors; Woolworths, Coca-Cola Amatil, Red Jelly, Wellcom Worldwide, Beak & Sons and muk Haircare Global. We are so grateful for their ongoing help and support.

Thank you to each and every one who attended, fundraised, dressed up and supported the 2018 Melbourne walk and helped raise over $41,000!