Earlier this week during his Run for the Voice ultra marathoner Pat Farmer ran to Yanchep National Park from Optus Stadium before heading north the next day.

It was dark when Mr Farmer arrived at the Yanchep Inn on Wednesday, May 3 but a small group of people were there to greet him including Noongar cultural guide and didgeridoo player Derek Nannup.

Pearce MHR Tracey Roberts said Mr Farmer was spending a grueling six months travelling 14,400km around Australia and no doubt he would feel every single kilometre but people were with him every step of the way.

Mr Farmer said the welcome to country and didgeridoo playing and people clapping and cheering him had lifted his spirit and his soul at the end of a more than 70km run.

In 1999 he ran 14,500km around Australia in 195 days averaging 80km a day for the centenary of the Federation of Australia so he knows what is in front of him by taking on the Run for the Voice, which is to finish in Urulu.

Among his ultra marathon achievements, he still holds the record for racing across the Simpson Desert and has done that run twice both times in summer with temperatures reaching as high as 48-49 degrees Celsius.

He said none of them had been easy but he had done them.

Part of the role had been taking complex messages and turning them into simple language for everybody.

“That’s exactly what we are doing here with the Voice,’’ he said.

“If you look any person in the eye I don’t care which corner of the globe they have come from and you ask them just look me straight in the eye and tell me ‘do you believe that there was nobody here when this place was colonised tell me really seriously dude?’ and of course they can’t say yes to that.

“Of course they know that the Indigenous people were here first and I say if you know that isn’t this a complete no-brainer that we at least acknowledge these people?

“And how lucky are we how fortunate are we how good are they that they want to come under our umbrella that they want to be part of this constitution of laws that legislates and rules in this country when it was their place in the first place.

“As the Prime Minister (Anthony Albanese) said this is a gift to us – we are foolish if we don’t accept this.’’

The former Liberal politician, whose grandfather was Italian and grandmother was Irish, told the audience he’d tell them about two things he’ll never forget relating to his centenary Federation run.

He was on the road running along through north Queensland before heading across and up towards Darwin.

“I come across this place called Elliott and Elliott consists of a garage station, a pub and a school that’s it.

“I’m jumping all these dead carcasses on the side of the road that the road trains had hit along the way.

“I jumped over a dead emu or a dead kangaroo or a dead pig and the flies would come off it and land on me and they’d stay with me for (some metres) hundreds of them all over my face and arms and everything and then go back to their feed after that and I’d go on and jump over another one.

“And while I’m doing this my shoes are sticking to the road because the tarmac was going soft and I’m getting all this tarmac on the base of my shoes.

“I’m thinking to myself who cares if I do this, there’s nobody here, I’m not in the cities now, there’s no black tie functions, there is no fanfare, there’s nobody clapping and cheering me on, who really gives a damn whether I do this or not.’’

He said just as if it was meant to be right at that moment a coaster bus appeared and pulled up on the other side of the road.

“This guy gets out and comes across to me and said to me ‘Are you Pat Farmer?’ and I looked around and there’s a shimmer coming off the road like a mirage it’s so roasting hot and I said ‘Who else would it be out here?’.

“He said he was the principal of Elliott school and he said I’ve got the kids on the bus here and they’re going to run the last 13km into town with you.

“I said to him do you know how hot it is out here?

“There’s no chance they’ll last five minutes.

“He said please, please it means so much to these kids.

“I said alright let them out but I hope you’ve got drinks and don’t go far with that bus because they’re not going to last five minutes.

“These kids got off the bus, most of them were Indigenous kids and we’re running along the road and they’re bare feet.

“The gravel on the side of the road up there is not like the gravel here it’s not 20mm aggregate it’s more like 50mm or broken bricks and I could see corners and all that sticking in the feet of the kids and still they had smiles on their faces.

“All these kids wanted to do was hold my hand and to touch me and we’re running along the road and they lasted the full 13km.

“We got to the school and they sat down underneath a tree in the shade and I started talking to them about my journey to that point.’’

After his talk the principal came over and with tears in his eyes and said the students had been following Mr Farmer’s journey since it started.

“He said ‘I saw you on the Bert Newton Show when you were talking about doing this run around Australia and I came in into the school and in those days these kids didn’t want to come to school – some of them seven, eight, nine-years-old and they were like what’s the use in going to school, we’re stuck here nothing’s going to change for us, this is our life we’ve got a waterhole down the road and that’s as good as it gets’ and he was trying to teach them about how to write essays and things – they were writing suicide notes – and I couldn’t believe this.

“The principal said to me but when I saw you on TV I got it and we’ve got one computer in the school and I said to the kids if you show up at school every day we’re going to track this guy and he’s coming to our place he’s coming to your school we’re going to watch where he goes every single day as he gets closer and closer and we’re going to learn about those towns where he’s stopping at the end of the day.

“So every single day the kids were so eager to come into school that’s why when I went running with them they all wanted to touch me to see if I was real because they had seen football players, they’d seen things on these screens but to them it was just the screen it was like going to the movies.

“That wasn’t going to change their life, their life was not going to be any better just by looking at that.

“They resolved themselves to the fact that their life wasn’t going to amount to much.

“But when I ran into that town the fact that I went there on two legs I didn’t show up in a Ferrari, I didn’t show up in a nice car or an airplane or whatever I get there on two legs and they knew where I started and they’d been tracking everywhere I went along the way so they knew I did the whole thing and then they realised if I could get there they could get out.

“They could do something with their lives, they could start to dream, they could start to be something, somebody they could be whatever they liked.

“And that is exactly what I spoke to them about and they were so happy.’’

Mr Farmer said while he was still the same person who earlier on had thought no one gave a damn about what he was doing he told the story because no one knows who is watching what you are doing and when you commit yourself and you take your words to actions you do make a difference to people’s lives.

He continued on his run and from that time he never whinged again or complained about how hot it was or how many flies there were or how difficult it was.

“I ran across the top end, went up to Darwin came back down to come through Katherine and across the top through Kununurra, Halls Creek.

“When I ran into Broome I ran into the arms of Pat Dodson and he put his arms around me and said welcome brother.

“At first, like I was when I first got here tonight sort of, my head’s all over the place I wasn’t sure what he meant and then after we’d spoken for a while then I started to realise.

“He saw in me the fact that I had pushed myself through the thunder and rain, through the driving wind, through all of that red dust out there and I had it up my nostrils and in my ears and through my hair and all over my clothes and I was pushing on regardless.

“And he saw in me this connection to this land – not somebody that was trying to beat the land but somebody who gave into the land and accepted it for the heat, the rain, the wind anything it was going to do just accepted it and pushed on regardless and that’s what Indigenous people have been doing in this country for the last 65,000 years – bushfires, floods, lightning strikes, cyclones and all the rest of it and they’ve been a continuous race.

“How blessed are we to get an opportunity to say yes to acknowledge all of that to be part of all of that and to stand up in front of all those people in Europe and around the world and say I come from Australia I am Australian I’m part of the oldest continuous civilization on this planet and I voted yes because I acknowledge that and the importance of all of that.

“How lucky are we – that’s what this run is all about.

I’ve got to tell you sometimes I break down on the road and sometimes it’s very difficult what I’m doing but that’s just a physical thing – in my heart in my mind I’m as strong and I cannot be broken because this is too important to be broken over.’’

He said he cannot imagine an Australia where the majority voted against the Voice.

But he is not leaving anything on the field and is giving everything he possibly can.

When he finished his earlier run around Australia then prime minister John Howard said he would like Mr Farmer to run for the next federal election.

He ran and was elected.

But said he won’t forget all the arguing about apologising to the Stolen Generation  – due to concerns about the cost of compensation and people losing their farms.

“Thank God we lost the election in 2007 – Kevin Rudd came in and the first thing he did was say sorry to the Stolen Generation – Brendan Nelson (former Opposition leader) stood right beside him and I was there and I’ll never forget that moment.

“The sentiment and the goodwill between us and Indigenous people changed – it made a big difference it was symbolic.’’

You can follow Mr Farmer’s progress here.

This article appeared on Yanchep News Online on 5 May 2023.