Sydney 2017 "Put Your Foot Down" Walk for Pancreatic Cancer
Manly Beach was seeing purple as our ninth Sydney "Put Your Foot Down" walk set off from North Steyne Surf Club on Sunday, August 6 to raise funds and awareness of Pancreatic Cancer. It is an incredible achievement to think that nine years have passed since the very first walk set off from Palm Beach.
Not only was the sun shining but the original Sydney record set in 2009, which raised $44,945 was smashed by 426 dedicated walkers who, to date, have raised over $60,000. A huge thank you goes to these wonderful people who put their “foot down” (or, in some cases, paw) in support of the Foundation.
Once again, the Beak & Sons BBQ van joined us and Ben, Alan and Yana cooked their delicious sausages all morning to make sure that none of our walkers or volunteers went hungry. A big thank you again to “team Beaks” for giving up their Sunday morning to help us out again. We couldn’t run our walks around Australia without the help and support of Beak & Johnston who deliver their sausages all around the country for all our “Put Your Foot Down” walks.
This year we were very lucky to have the services of Vittoria Coffee who parked their van alongside the BBQ and pumped out coffee continuously all morning. A big thank you to Montana and Ella for keeping us all caffeinated and not only donating their time but also all the proceeds from the coffee sales to the Foundation.
It was certainly a year of firsts as we also had Jonathan Buckland whose film production company, Cope Street Crew filmed our walk pro-bono. We can’t wait to see the final result and we will be featuring this on our website as soon as it is available.
In particular we would like to thank Associate Professor, Phoebe Phillips for attending the walk and bringing us up to date with her research into Pancreatic Cancer.
Thank you also to the amazing Michael Mannington from Volunteer Photography who did a fantastic job of capturing some beautiful shots of the day in the album below!
And to Tash from Radify Personal Training for warming up our walkers.
Finally a massive thank you to all of our volunteers for helping out on the day;
Rick and his amazing team of marshals; Jacinta, Natalie, Ash, Kate, Hayley, Jim and Connor, and our wonderful crew who registered the walkers, sold merchandise and fed all our participants; Jude, Sietse, Susan, Sam, Em, Anne, Gary, Maysoon, Fye, Adrian and Megan.
We would also like to thank the Manly Daily for their in-depth article in the lead up to the walk and to Kristin Washbourne and her family for sharing your story and to our Scientific Advisor Assoc Prof Nick Pavlakis for sharing your insights into the disease.
The wonderful team from the “Bold and Beautiful Swim Squad” held another bake sale this year on the Saturday prior to the walk at the Manly Life Saving Club and raised $900 with all proceeds going to the Sydney walk. Thank you to everyone who baked, bought and donated and to Elaine and Lisa for organising it and to Roz for helping on the stall.
Congratulations to our winners on the day;
Highest Fundraisers - Team
- Vanessa Burge - Lindy’s Legends - $8,318
- Toneya Bennett - Walking for Leonie - $6,534
Highest Fundraiser - Individual
- Richard Kim - $9,999
- Lindy Richardson - $4,617
Most Creatively Dressed Team - Rob’s Mob
Most Creatively Dressed Child - Makenzie Wilson
Most Creatively Dressed Adult - Disco Steve
As always a very big thank you to our fantastic sponsors Coca-Cola Amatil, Woolworths, Wellcom Worldwide, Beak & Sons and Muk Haircare Global.
And last, but not least, thank you to our amazing walkers who registered, fundraised, dressed up in purple and made the walk such a record breaking success!
We look forward to seeing everyone in 2018!