Kiwi trio want to become the first to walk a straight-line across New Zealand (2024)

Three Kiwi friends are taking on a social media trend of walking in a straight line from Northland's west to east coast for the Movember charity.

The trend started in 2019 when YouTuber Tom Davis attempted to walk in a straight line across Wales.

Now, Kiwi lads Tane Tarlton, Ben Reeve and Alex Smith are attempting to pull off the feat for the first time in New Zealand, walking 60km from Dargaville's Baylys Beach to Whangārei's One Tree Point as part of the charity's annual men's health movement, which focuses on prevention, early intervention and health promotion.

The charity encourages people to walk 60km in November to raise awareness of the 60 men taking their lives every hour across the world.

Movember is a cause close to Alex's heart - his mother died by suicide when he was young and his father died earlier this year after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The lads were due to finish the trip today - they have now passed the Tangihua hills - but they've faced obstacles along the way, including crossing a 450m section of the Wairoa River.

"Because we're carrying all of our equipment with us we needed something to get across," Reeve told Afternoons.

"So luckily we got gifted a pack raft from Packraft New Zealand which we took through the reeds, because on either side of the river there's about 200 metres of two-metre tall cutty grass, so we had to lug this little Packraft through and inflated it and we had three of us on a two-person raft.

"Somehow we managed to make it to the other side of the river without deviating more than 15 metres off the line."

While the 'walking in a straight line' challenge has been attempted once in Aotearoa in 2022, no Kiwi has completed it as of yet. It is ranked into three categories; platinum for staying within 25m of the line, gold for 50m, silver for 75m and bronze for 100m. Those that deviate more than 100m are considered to have failed.

The trio are tracking their progress with a GPS, but it won't be until the end of their journey when they load the data off onto a computer that they'll be able to tell how close to 'the line' they were.

"We wanted something with a challenge and our main focus also was for the Movember charity ... so we thought we'd do that challenge but put our own twist on it," Reeve said.

"It's been a long few days but we're getting through it and we've definitely passed halfway now which is an exciting point.

"We've raised a bit of money so far and it's going well so far."

The trio mapped out their journey ahead using satellite imagery to pinpoint possible spots to set up a tent at overnight and property owners they'd need to speak to before going over their land.

"We reached out to them before ... and everyone was super chill with it and said yeap.

"We've met up with a few today and they turned off their electric fences for us ... a lot of planning and preparation has gone into this trek and it's something that's never been done before which is why we chose to do it for the Movember charity.

The friends are posing updates on The Kiwi Ventures social media pages, including a wrap up of each day, and plan to do more video content at the end of their trek.

Copyright © 2024, Radio New Zealand

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