The Dream:

To be the first female to walk around Australia whilst raising awareness and money for Kids Help Line.

Kids Help Line is Australia’s only 24-hour free, confidential and anonymous telephone and online counselling service for young people aged 5-18.

The Walk:

Walk around Australia – A journey for kids, is a charity walk starting from Melbourne, Australia on Friday 17th October 2003, heading in a clockwise direction walking around mainland Australia, returning back to Melbourne within a year.

The current world record of 365 day was set by Nobby Young, the first person to walk around Australia back in 1993/1994. I would have set my target on equally Nobby’s record and hopefully with a little help from the universe breaking his record. So keep watching the website and following my progress to see how I am going.

To achieve my goal of being the first female to walk around Australia I will be walking an average of 42.2 kms/day with the total kms being just over 14,500kms. The majority of the time I will be walking on Australia’s main national highway, Highway 1.

Not to leave out our beautiful and offered forgotten state of Tasmania, a short 7-day trial walk from Hobart to Devonport has been arranged. I will be leaving Hobart on Thursday 11th September and arriving in Devonport on Thursday 18th September.

Throughout the walk I will be visiting over 150 towns and cities. During my visits will be talking to various community groups, media, primary, secondary and remote rural area schools and school of the air students with, the intent to raise awareness and money for Kids Help Line and to inspire children and adults alike to follow their dreams.

For full lists of Towns and Route detail click here

I will be the primary walker but will be followed by a support crew for the entire trip.

Public walks have been organized as I depart and arrive into various towns. I hope these public walks capture and build ‘community spirit’ and involvement with my journey and I encourage and welcome anyone to join me as I walk into their community.

To view public walk information click here

To help me with my fundraising efforts I ask for a small donation from everyone who walks with me, this of course is not a criteria for walking but would help raise the target of $100,000 to enable an additional 14,000 cries for help to be answered.

The walk will be recorded on this web site and will contain a weekly up dated web diary, a photo gallery of the walk, route map, as well as the latest news and information about, kilometres achieved, towns visited & organized public walks.

Through out the walk people can contact Deborah on e-mail

To contact Deborah click here

This web site also has a special kids web page where information about the school visits will be posted including photos of my visits with the children and any drawings or writings they may want to post on the web.

The underlying philosophy and motivation for Deborah’s walk is:

“I believe that our children are our future. By teaching our children that they are unique and special, giving them a sense of their own value and showing them the value of others, I believe we can empower our children to choose a better future for themselves.