{"id":479738,"date":"2026-03-17T04:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T04:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479738\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T04:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T04:05:10","slug":"wa-farmer-plans-2027-run-across-canada-to-raise-rural-mental-health-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479738\/","title":{"rendered":"WA farmer plans 2027 run across Canada to raise rural mental health awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"

What began as a late-night joke among friends has grown into a bold plan for a 20-year-old farmer to run the entire length of Canada to raise awareness for rural mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lachie Young, who lives in Brookton, about 150 kilometres south-east of Perth, decided to set himself the challenge after a night with his mates put the idea in his head.<\/p>\n

“It was mid-2024, and I was travelling with mates overseas, and it was a bit of a drunken joke,” Mr Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“At the time, I had been living on the farm, and all my mates were at uni. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“After that conversation, the plan started to snowball, and two years later, I’m planning on running across Canada in a year.”\"man<\/p>\n

Lachie Young grew up on a farm in the Wheatbelt in Western Australia. (Supplied: Lachie Young)<\/p>\n

The Wheatbelt producer, who plans to cross the country in 2027, expects the challenge to take about 150 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The plan is to start in the small town of Sydney in the east, and then the run should take me around 6,500km,” Mr Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am then going to finish in the town of Victoria in the west, the other side of Vancouver.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be running through snow, through the Rocky Mountains, passing through bear country.<\/p>\n

“But I reckon it is going to be an awesome experience.”<\/p>\n

A reason to run<\/p>\n

The plan to run across the world’s second-largest country comes from a personal place.<\/p>\n

“I’ve seen the effects of mental health in my community, in the country, especially with farmers,” Mr Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s affected my family, myself, people around me.”\"man<\/p>\n

Inspired by athletes like Nedd Brockmann, Lachie Young has set out to run across the world’s second-largest country. (Supplied: Bursty\/Marty Rowney)<\/p>\n

Mr Young believed the conversation around mental health had grown in recent years, but said there was still a need to talk about it more openly in rural areas.<\/p>\n

“I went to school in the city, and there was a very strong presence of talking about mental health and getting around it,” Mr Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Then you come out here, there is still a small presence of it, but I believe that mental health and that discussion still lacks. There needs to be more resources.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The runner hopes to raise $1 million for the Blue Tree Project<\/a>, a regional mental health care charity that paints dead trees blue as a symbol of hope for those undergoing mental health challenges.<\/p>\n

\"Picture<\/p>\n

The original blue tree was painted in 2014 by Jayden Whyte, on his family’s farm at Mukinbudin. (Supplied: Kendall Whyte)<\/p>\n

Blue Tree Project chief executive Kendall Whyte said Mr Young’s project was an “incredible feat”.<\/p>\n

“We’re always\u00a0extremely grateful to those who fundraise for the charity, particularly\u00a0when putting their minds and bodies on the line for our cause,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What began as a late-night joke among friends has grown into a bold plan for a 20-year-old farmer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[5083,170545,170547,27525,6647,102,170546,1906,6928,6623,10695,170548,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-479738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-agriculture","tag-blue-tree-project","tag-blue-trees","tag-farming","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-lachie-young","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-illness","tag-mentalhealth","tag-running","tag-running-in-canada","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}