Ten highlights for ten years: The Bus Trip
2025-04-23
Introducing the fourth highlight for Owen Finegan's ten years as CEO of The Kids' Cancer Project!
The opportunity to join our Founder, Col Reynolds, on a one-month bus journey from Townsville to Tasmania and back to Sydney as CEO was an amazing experience.
The Kids’ Cancer Project embarked on a national awareness campaign travelling the east coast of Australia by bus, departing Townsville and visiting 21 towns through August arriving back to Sydney on 1 September, aligning with Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
Col, a Townsville resident and former tourist bus driver, got back on the bus kindly donated by the Premier Motor Group, with our petrol donated by Caltex. We set off in a bid to celebrate several local communities passionate about supporting childhood cancer research, and we used the brightly coloured bus to encourage others to get on board.
It was the late 1980s when Col had finished taking visitors around Sydney on one of his sightseeing tours and took a wrong turn. It placed him adjacent to the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Camperdown. Giving way at a crossing to two young, bald kids with cancer, he was prompted to park his empty bus and head inside. It altered the course of his life forever. Some five million kilometres in a bus circumnavigating the continent had led him to his destination.
Stirred by the character of the doctors and patients he met during his impulsive meeting; he vowed to help kids with cancer in any way he could. Col first began taking kids on the coaches on excursions to try and lift their spirits, purely out of his own back pocket. Tickets to the footy, trips to the zoo, mounted police, the fire training centre and ice cream orders at McDonald’s were a constant.
The Kids’ Cancer Project’s bus tour was about celebrating Col’s legacy, igniting hearts and minds nationally by sharing his amazing story.
We aimed to inspire the Australian community to be like Col and support the three Aussie families changed forever by a chilling diagnosis every day. Along the route there were media outlets, families, advocates, fundraisers, donors and community groups that helped us raise awareness and funds nationally.
The history of the charity started over 30 years ago on a bus, so the opportunity to travel over 10,000 km across Australia raising awareness and funds for childhood cancer research was a trip of a lifetime.
Without question, the highlight of the trip was seeing so may passionate supporters, as we announced $300,000 in funding to establish a state-wide Children’s and Adolescent/Young Adult Cancer Clinical Trials Unit in Tasmania allowing access to clinical trials for the first time for children diagnosed with cancer in Tasmania a commitment that is now fully funded by the Tasmanian Government.
Mine and Col’s travels have even taken us to the Kokoda Trail. That highlight is coming soon!
Instead of trekking 10,000 kilometres, I’m aiming to raise $100,000 for the 10,000 children diagnosed with cancer over the last 10 years, coinciding with my tenure as CEO of The Kids’ Cancer Project.