Just shy of 73, Canberra’s Gail Brien might be the oldest woman to walk the Kokoda Track, leaving Canberra for Papa New Guinea today, Friday 13 October.

“I’ve done Google searches, I know there’s a guy who was 89 or 91 from WA, he did it. But the women I’ve only found two, who are both 71, on separate occasions,” says Gail.

A self-confessed couch potato, Gail was worried a lifetime of exercising her mind and not her body was beginning to take its toll. Late last year, she found her herself lost walking or driving places she knew and forgetting things and started to worry dementia was setting in, knowing the signs after watching her dad go through the same thing.

“I do everything else, but I don’t do aerobic exercise to get oxygen to my brain. So, it’s never had enough because I’m a couch potato masquerading as an athlete. I thought ‘What will get me to do this dreaded aerobic exercise that I have avoided for 60 years?’”

Back in the early 1970s, Gail lived in Papa New Guinea and has always talked about doing the Kokoda Track as her father-in-law served there. Keen to see how the country had changed over the past half-century, she decided Kokoda was her goal.  

In January, Gail started her training with a personal trainer but soon found it was too much pressure on her knees. Reaching out to friends, some of whom have walked the track before, Gail was advised that the best way to prepare would be to walk similar terrain.

“He said ‘Look, if you’re going to go walking in Kokoda, you need to walk up and down mountains because that’s what you’ll be doing’ and so I started walking around here, Mount Rogers also Lake Ginninderra, to get the distance in,” says Gail.

Her first time hiking Mount Ainslie took twice the suggested time and left her feeling light-headed, but she persevered with walking the mountains of Canberra. Now Gail can conquer Mount Ainslie four times in a row. Along with the actual hill climbing, Gail hits the Stairmaster at the gym to get incline practice in.

“It’s eight days and I can’t give up because you’re stuck in the middle of a jungle on a mountain. I thought how am I going to know if I can cope with eight days of continuous walking? So, I decided I would walk … I did 165km in total in eight days, I hurt every day,” she says.

Through back, knee and whole-body pain, Gail has continued her training with few rest days in between. In June, she took a fitness test and was thrilled to see that she was now fitter than most 40–49-year-olds.

Expecting a long and difficult trek, Gail has been following the journey of people doing the trek before her, many of whom comment that it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. She says the weather can change on a dime and torrential rains leave the ground muddy and difficult to walk. However, Gail is determined to remain positive.

“I’ll have a little diary and a pencil all in a waterproof bag and I will write down the highlights or the trauma of each day. I want to find something really positive every day, no matter how dreadful it’s been.”

The company Gail is doing the trek through sent a care package with snacks and all the freeze-dried meals they need. Never having taken an overnight or even a day hike, Gail says she is more worried about ensuring she has everything she needs than the actual walking.

Wanting to add extra meaning to the physical feat, Gail decided to host a fundraiser in honour of her friend, Brenda, who passed away last year due to neuroendocrine cancer.

“It’s hormone-related cancer, quite rare and it can affect any age; children under five get a particular type of it. Steve Jobs and Aretha Franklin both had pancreatic, but it was a neuroendocrine tumour in the pancreas,” says Gail. “Most people don’t get diagnosed correctly for five years. By that time, of course, it’s spread, it’s not really curable.”

The cancer spread throughout Brenda’s body and she was housebound for the last few months of her life, passing 12 years after her diagnosis. Retiring a few years after Brenda’s diagnosis, Gail and Brenda made the most of their time together each year by going on a trip.

“She said ‘I never would have imagined having that many trips’. We had such a great time, I was always grateful for that,” says Gail.

Hitting 70 during that time, Gail thought this was as good as it gets health-wise and perhaps it was time to change some habits. A self-confessed information enthusiast, she spends hours getting lost in rabbit holes of titbits she comes across online; throughout her career she worked in statistics and exercising her brain has never been an issue.

“When you sleep on an arm and you don’t get blood flow to the arm and it goes all numb, I’m not saying your brain goes numb but I think it has an impact on how well it works. I did have a brain scan and it did show there were a couple of age-related white spots,” she says.

Gail’s advice to other people wanting to push themselves or try something new is to just start where you are at and then move forward – even if it is clichéd, she says the first step is the most important. The septuagenarian wants to encourage older people like herself who might want to curl up with a good book and tasty treat on the couch that they can do what they want, no matter what it is.

“It’s important when you get older to know that nothing is stopping you from doing things other than you. I have arthritis, depression, anxiety, bipolar, thyroid – you name it; I’ve got so many things, but I don’t have anything that really stops me from doing stuff I want to do,” smiles Gail.

To support Gail on her Kokoda Track walk for Neuroendocrine Cancer, visit neuroendocrine.org.au/campaigns/kokoda-track-in-memory-of-brenda; donations are open until 22 December.

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