Wheel Altruism

Through the late-afternoon sun shower, it hovers on the horizon: a fluoro-red-eyed monster, or a UFO. Then, as the rain clears, the strange beam of light becomes the reflector shield of a high-tech wheelbarrow being pushed along the Nullarbor by a tanned young man wearing a blue bandanna and a welcoming smile. “Every day I get at least two offers for a lift,” says Matt Shaw, 32. “People are always stopping; I guessit breaks up the journey a bit for them.”In the past 57 days, Shaw’s journey has rarely stopped for long. On March 31, the registered nurse set out from his Ringwood home in suburban Melbourne with the aim of walking clockwise around Highway 1. “It’s something I wanted to do before I got too much older and couldn’t physically do it,” he explains. “Friends thought I was insane, and family were a bit worried.”

Fear not, there is method in his madness. While working as a nurse in intensive care, Shaw became familiar with a group of volunteers helping to support young people with cancer. “They really impressed me,” he says of the charity CanTeen, “so I thought I’d do some work for them.” In the 3,300 km he’s walked so far, Shaw has raised $650 in his collection tin for CanTeen, which was formed in 1985 to raise awareness for teenagers living with cancer. Even Shaw’s jaunty bandanna has meaning; it was adopted as the group’s symbol in 1994.

Keeping a brisk pace, the wheelbarrow pusher has covered a staggering 58 km a day so far—traveling faster than the Gladesville postal worker Nobby Young, who at 44 km a day over 365 days, set a record pace for circumnavigating Australia in 1994. But the very Zen-like Shaw would seem to be in no real hurry to return to Ringwood. “Back on the Nullarbor,” he says, of the limestone plateau he’s just crossed, “you can hear the bark peeling off the trees. It’s amazing—it’s just that quiet. You become part of the land, I guess.”