Terri Irani, Sam Seymour, Jayne Baylesm, Renee Daly, Jenn Edis, Jenn Heggarty, Georgie Eastaugh and Angela Edwards have completed some epic treks - like the Kokoda Challenge – and raised money for foundations like Oxfam.

Now the women are training to complete the 30-kilometre Wild Women On Top Melbourne Coastrek, which is held along Melbourne’s Mornington Penisula, to raise money for the Fred Hollows Foundation. 

Internationally renowned eye surgeon and humanitarian Fred Hollows started the foundation to end avoidable blindness in Indigenous Australia and around the world. 

Eye diseases like cataract, trachoma and diabetic retinopathy lead to permanent blindness when often, the conditions are treatable or preventable.

More than 25,000 trekkers have walked 1.2 million kilometres across events in Melbourne, Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, raising more than $22 million for the foundation. 

Among those will be eight Launceston women in two teams – Madhatters 1 and Madhatters 2.

Angela Edwards said all the women had young children about the same time, so they decided to ditch their coffees and walk together with their prams. 

Casual strolls quickly turned into a fitness and fundraising journey for the eight women. 

“We wanted a fitness goal to work towards and we wanted to be able to contribute … so that’s when we started looking at different options to fundraise and reach our fitness goals,” Ms Edwards said.

Despite not having any experience in long-distance treks, the women wanted to do something challenging, so about eight years ago they tackled the 100-kilometre Kokoda Challenge. 

“We were in our 30s when we did the first one,” Ms Edwards said.

Fast forward 10 years and the women are training for the 30-kilometre fundraiser.

“It has been 10 years and our knees are probably liking the idea of doing shorter events,” Ms Edwards said.

Fred Hollows founding director Gabi Hollows said it was inspiring to see so many people join the fight to end avoidable blindness.

“There are more than 36 million people in the world who are blind, and four out of five of them don’t need to be,” she said.

The Fred Hollows Foundations operates in 25 countries. 

It has restored sight for more than 2.5 million people, “often with a simple, 20-minute operation”. 

“A $25 cataract treatment is all it takes to restore someone’s sight and significantly change their future,” Ms Edwards said.

The Melbourne walk is entering its fourth year and about 2000 women are expected to complete the trek on May 25. 

Preparation for the 30-kilometre trek in Melbourne is no walk in the park. 

About four times a week the women meet as a group to train on the Duck Reach track, irrelevant of when their next fundraiser is.  

Duck Reach is an ideal training location because the terrain is similar to the coastal trek in Melbourne. 

Ms Edwards said they try to get an extra training in on the weekends, but it is usually in smaller groups or as individuals.

“The maximum distance we would train for an event like this is about 25 kms,” Ms Edwards said. 

Each woman trains about 10 hours a week.  

“One of the things we get out of it is the support we get as a group of women who catch up regularly,” she said. 

“You feel good about yourself giving to such a worthy cause but we get a lot of personal gains out of it through the constant communication with a group of like-minded ladies.”

A ticketed fundraiser, held at Clove cafe, saw the women reach their goal of $5000 in one night. 

“We had all the alcohol donated by Sharmans and Small Grain catering donated food … they were very generous,” Ms Edwards said. 

“One of the owners of Sharmans is one of the owners at the eye hospital - we thought that was a great synergy.”

Several businesses and community groups also donated items for a silent auction on the night. 

Fundraising efforts are continuing.

You can donate to Madhatters 1 and 2 by visiting the Melbourne coastal trek website.