A Long Walk Home: Why the Foundation Is Joining Trek4Vets This ANZAC Day
- Bain Dohne
- Apr 23
- 4 min read
This Friday night, while much of Newcastle sleeps, a group of us will set out from Redhead Beach with head torches, hiking packs, and the long night ahead. By the time we reach Nobby's Beach, it will be close to dawn. We will fold into a crowd that often runs more than fifty thousand strong, and we'll stand for the Newcastle ANZAC Day Dawn Service.
The walk is called Midnight2Dawn. It is run by Trek4Vets — a not-for-profit that exists for one reason: to bridge the distance between civilian life and the military one, one long night at a time. Eighteen kilometres through bush track, stairs, sand, and dark. Conversations of a kind that only happen when you're four hours in, and still hours from sleep.
The Directors of the Odyssey Leadership Foundation and I will be walking together. We are not running a campaign. We are showing up — because the work Trek4Vets does matter, and because it sits alongside our own.
Why this, why us
The Foundation's work is civic. We help build young Australians' capacity to lead — through civics education, public speaking, debate, and youth-led community projects. Our primary long-term partner, The Y NSW Youth Parliament Program, brings Year 10 to 12 students from across the state into the chambers of NSW Parliament House to take policy seriously.
That work seems removed from a pack march at midnight. The distance is shorter than it looks.
Civic leadership, done well, means asking harder questions before a country sends its young men and women into harm's way — and making sure that, when they come home, the country they return to is one that recognises what it has asked of them. The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which delivered its final report in September 2024, found that between 1997 and 2021, 1,677 current and former ADF members took their own lives. The Commission believes the true figure, once under-reporting is accounted for, sits above 3,000.
That is not only a Defence matter. It is a civic one — and it falls to the whole country, not only the uniformed part of it, to carry. Each loss affects everyone within their orbit, and many more are directly affected. We are in this together.
What the walk is for
In my years in uniform, I spent time in postings that brought me close to this. Between 2013 and 2014, I served at the ADFIS Defence Abuse Response Taskforce. After that, as a Personnel Capability Officer in Security Forces, I worked alongside members who did not walk out — and members who, but for the grace of a timely conversation, might not have.
I won't be writing more about that here. Those stories are not mine alone, and they deserve the privacy they've been given. But I will say this: the thing that most often made a difference was not a program, policy, or framework. It was a human being, present, unhurried, and willing to listen. Everything else — the services, the reforms, the legislation — works because of that or fails despite it. When I reflect on my own journey, I was medically discharged from the Air Force just days away from ANZAC Day in 2021, a severe policy failure, and without the persistent and kind support of my family and friends; things may have been very different.
Trek4Vets understands this at an organisational level. The walk is designed for it. The hours on the track — the long stillness, the cold before dawn, the shared burden of packs and kilometres — do the work that words cannot. Over a long enough night, the distance between a civilian and a veteran becomes the distance between two people walking side by side. Which is to say, no distance at all.
How you can help
If you'd like to support this work, there are two places worth your money. Both are good. Neither of them is us doing the walking — the walking is the easy part.
Trek4Vets runs a volunteer-led operation. Every dollar underwrites the treks and the community that surrounds them: https://trek4vets.com.au/donations/
The Odyssey Leadership Foundation, through our fund with the Australian Communities Foundation, uses donations to resource youth civic leadership programs with DGR1 partner organisations: Donate to The Foundation
If you know a veteran, this is also the week to pick up the phone. The data shows that many veterans carry more than the country sees. A call is worth more than a post. We know this, and we say it because it keeps being true.
We look forward to seeing many of you on the sand at Nobby's before sunrise on Saturday.
Bain Dohne is the CEO and Founder of the Odyssey Leadership Foundation. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force from 2006, with eight posts and two deployments, including a posting to the ADFIS Defence Abuse Response Taskforce and a subsequent roles as the Personnel Capability Officer in Security Forces. Bain was medically discharged in 2021.
If this piece raises anything for you, support is available. Open Arms — Veterans & Families Counselling: 1800 011 046. Lifeline: 13 11 14.
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