Twenty years later, Mr and Mrs Ogden are about to embark on their approximate 3000 kilometre unsupported tandem bike ride, raising money for Rotary's "End Polio Now" campaign.

"We looked at this and thought, are we getting too old? But we decided we had some more years left in us," Mrs Ogden said.

The two Rotarians will leave from Adelaide on April 3 and tandem ride to Sydney via Melbourne.

They will stop at around 30 Rotary Clubs along the way before arriving in Penrith, Sydney at the end of May.

The journey will take them around two months to complete.

In their mid seventies, Mr and Mrs Ogden have ridden their tandem bike in multiple countries across varying terrains, including the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Rockies.

In 2022, the couple undertook a similar tandem ride across the Nullarbor, where the couple raised $38000 for the end polio campaign.

"I think everybody feels it's all disappeared, and it really hasn't. But if we take our minds off all this, it will start to spread back," Mrs Ogden said.

"Over the next 100 years, we will save billions of dollars if we can eradicate it now," Mr Ogden, a retired doctor, said.

Though he only found out a few years ago, Mr Ogden's brother had contracted polio when they were both very young.

"He was seven and I was five, he spent three months in hospital with suspected polio. He didn't get any neurological consequences at all but he did, looking back on it, develop what's called the post-polio syndrome," Mr Ogden said.

Mrs Ogden grew up in Bristol, UK and said she remembers that before the polio vaccine was made, "people were scared".

"I remember that we were living in the centre of Bristol. And my father insisted that we move out into the edge to avoid the scare," she said.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), polio (poliomyelitis) mainly affects children under 5 years of age. It is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus.

It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours, with one in 200 infections leading to irreversible paralysis.

A high profile example of the extreme long-term effects of polio is Paul Alexander, the man who lived most of his life in an iron lung after contracting the virus at age six.

Mr Alexander passed away at age 78 on March 14, 2024.

While there is no cure for polio, it can be prevented. According to the WHO, "the world stands on the threshold of eradicating a human disease globally for only the second time in history, after smallpox in 1980".

For the last 35 years, one of the pioneers behind the attempt to eradicate polio is Rotary.

They are one of the founding members of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has helped to vaccinate over 2.5 billion children against the virus.

According to the Rotary website, on average it costs as little as $3 to fully protect a child against polio.

Mr and Mrs Ogden "would welcome donations of $6+ to finally 'Hit Polio for Six!'" That's about as much as your morning coffee costs.

Donations to the Ogden's fundraiser can be made via: https://raise.rotary.org/joyce+phil/challenge.