Jacob King is on a gruelling cycling journey to the four points of Australia’s mainland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is taking on the four-point challenge, an expedition during which he will ride to the northern, western, southern and easternmost points of the Australian mainland.<\/p>\n
He will cover more than 17,000 kilometres in just 90 days.<\/p>\n
His goal \u2014 raising $100,000 for the Starlight Children’s Foundation \u2014 is all the motivation he needs.<\/p>\n
Mr King said he was volunteering to put himself through immense pain and discomfort for sick kids who did not have a choice and faced pain every day.<\/p>\n
“I realise that there are so many Australians and children out there that have to do hard things and they have bigger, more difficult challenges than me every single day,” Mr King said.<\/p>\n
“They don’t have the opportunity to give up or quit when things get tough.”<\/p>\n
Jacob King rides through Geraldton in WA. (ABC Midwest & Wheatbelt: Chris Lewis)<\/p>\n
Mr King’s journey started in Mackay in Queensland on July 1.<\/p>\n
He has since reached the northern and western-most points \u2014 Cape York in Queensland and Steep Point in WA.<\/p>\n
“Cape York was basically eight continuous days of corrugated gravel,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was four days in, four days out.<\/p>\n
“We were going on four hours’ sleep and \u2026 just knowing that you had to get up and do it again every single day.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jacob King stops at the northernmost point of Australia’s mainland. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Mr King said Steep Point was probably the most difficult section of the journey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was a 324-kilometre session through sand and dirt that lasted 24 and a half hours,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sudden illness<\/p>\n
Mr King is now making his way to South Point in Victoria, and will then ride to Cape Byron in New South Wales, before finishing the three-month-long trek in Mackay.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday, which was day 50 of the challenge, a stomach bug landed Mr King in hospital in Wagin, in southern Western Australia.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t get to sleep, started throwing up all night, and couldn’t keep any food down,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jacob King received intravenous fluid at hospital in Wagin. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
But opting to “punch on”, he was back on the bike on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He said a phone call at a vital time provided an extra boost.<\/p>\n
“A lady by the name of Effie reached out to me, and that was probably when I was at a bit of a low point,” Mr King said.<\/p>\n
“She shared that her younger sister was quite ill, and that the foundation was there to help support her and her sister through that. Luckily, her sister recovered.<\/p>\n
He said it reinforced that the voluntary suffering he was enduring was for a good cause.<\/p>\n
“So, the fact that I’m making this choice to do this and support those guys and their challenge, it really makes it all worthwhile,” he said.<\/p>\n
It took Jacob King more than 24 hours to get to Steep Point and back to his campsite. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
With more than $24,000 raised so far, Mr King said he was proud to be able to help kids battling serious sickness.<\/p>\n
“It already does feel amazing because I know that the money that’s being raised right now is helping kids today in hospitals,” he said.<\/p>\n
“At the end, being able to look back on the total and be like, ‘Wow, this is how much I’ve been able to, you know, achieve and help these kids,’ is really going to be quite a special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacob King is on a gruelling cycling journey to the four points of Australia’s mainland.\u00a0 He is taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[193,7503,4985,43759,3370,43762,43763,40105,101,43761,43760,56,54,55,17285],"class_list":["post-87059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-charity","tag-children","tag-cycling","tag-four-point-challenge","tag-fundraising","tag-jacob-king","tag-lee-king","tag-sick","tag-sports","tag-starlight","tag-starlight-children-foundation","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87059","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=87059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}