Crescent Head raised Ben Scott is walking from Sydney to Alaska - yes you read that correctly - Alaska. But the first milestone on his mammoth journey is Darwin.
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Ben left Sydney on December 29 2021, and is currently resting in Nyngan, 580km into his journey, which he is completing with his German Shepard Frankie.
It all began when Ben moved back to Australia just before the COVID pandemic.
"I went down the rabbit hole of addiction, and I developed a pretty severe chemical dependence," Ben said.
"My parents, family and friends were hassling me to go to rehab and I already had a pet dog, and he was my excuse for never to wanting to go to rehab because I couldn't take him anywhere."
He said the 12 step program didn't work for him and he was looking for another way to get clean.
"I wanted to get sober myself, and am quite ambitious so I decided why don't I do my own rehab, my own recovery, and I came up with this grand plan," He said.
After trawling the internet, he came across a man who is circumnavigating the world with his pet dog, and decided to create his own grand plan consisting of six milestones.
"The rules of the journey is that it is solo man, and solo powered, only our beating hearts can get us there," he said.
- Milestone one: Walking from Sydney to Darwin
- Milestone two: Darwin to Thailand, which would consist of kayaking across the Timor Sea.
- Milestone three: Thailand to Beijing, China,
- Milestone four: Beijing China to Russia
- Milestone five: Russia to the North East Russian Border,
- Milestone six: North East Russian border to Alaska,
"Alaska as the final stop is super symbolic, because it's my sisters name, and the extremity of it," Ben said.
"Another thing that makes this all the more interesting is that unbeknownst to us, my father is adopted, and he has been looking for his family for the last 10 years, and in the last few weeks he got in contact with them, and it turns out that my biological aunty has walked across the world."
Ben's aunty, Paula Constant, made an expedition on foot through eight countries walking over 12000km, 7000km of which she made solo with camels through the Sahara.
"It sounds kind of cliché to say you found your calling, but before I even found out about my biological aunty, it already felt like my calling, but it reaffirmed that I was doing the right thing," he said.
Since beginning the walk, Ben said the trip has transformed from not only a personal journey, but something for others to draw inspiration from.
"Overcoming addiction and other mental health issues can be seen as impossible for the person struggling with it, so to be a walking talking example that you can overcome the impossible is what I want to be for people," Ben said.
He shared that during his journey he has experienced immense kindness from strangers on the journey, whether it be water, free dinners, money or a place to stay at night.
"It's shades of lenses getting taken off, I get awed and gob smacked on a daily basis by the kindness in the world," he said.
Ben has created a charity called Walk2Recovery, and has grand plans for the future.
"I'm trying to paint a path for a new unconventional method of recovery, and ultimately the goal is to come back and start a recovery centre on the mid-north coast," he said.
"The big takeaway is, what you focus on is what you get. So if you focus on how beautiful life is, it is, and if you focus on how bad it is, it can get bad really quickly."
You can keep up to date with Ben and Frankie's on the Walk2Recovery Facebook page and donate via his Walk2Recovery gofundme page.
Also Ben's journey relies on donations and kindness from strangers, if you would like to donate you can find details in at the end of this video.
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