Concept

Our original concept worked with the message - Don't procrastinate - do it now!

Strange things start to happen when you turn 45 years old. Life starts to provide more questions than answers; you notice new employees are born in a year that you still remember like yesterday and it slowly dawns that you are closer in years to retirement than since leaving school. The meaning of life suddenly becomes important!

So this is what they call a mid-life crisis!

Mine started in the spring of 2005. Each day rolled into the next: alarm at 7.00am, if neither of my two young daughters had yet bounced into the bedroom; TV on to keep up to date and learn

Of discussion points to have with other sad people who had nothing else in their lives but the latest depressing news. Then downstairs at 7.20 to grab a bowl of Cheerios, and at 7.32, return upstairs for the sports news. I was in the shower by 7.45, then a mad dash to get out of the house by 8.15am.

I would leave the office by 7pm to arrive home by 7.30pm, spend a quality whole 5 minutes with my children before their bedtime and then tea on a tray in front of the TV watching anything that didn't require any thought or effort. By 10.30 bed would be calling me, and I was asleep even as my head hit the pillow. I had become this boring, middle-aged man whose whole life was well within the day-to-day comfort zone.

Then in the spring of 2005, I was idly watching a TV program that usually I wouldn't have taken much notice of, when the voice of Ewan McGregor grabbed my attention. He and best friend Charlie Borman had taken a motorbike trip around the world. As I started to watch the challenges of their epic journey, I found myself reflecting on my own life.

I realised my working life had been driven by short-term material goals, after leaving school I wanted to pass my driving test and buy a car, then it was all about travelling and holidays. Buy a house, get married, have children, all my dreams and ambitions achieved by 45. But now I looked at my life and found myself having mixed thoughts: I had a beautiful wife, two gorgeous children, a nice, middle-class, four bedroom detached house. I had achieved all my goals and my next big event would be retirement.

First Steps:

The next day I phoned my best friend of 17 years, Jon Ingram. When we first met there were a number of similarities in our history. We were the same age - our birthdays are only two weeks apart. Our mothers had both died of cancer when we were 17; both of us had married within a few weeks of each other and we are both Sunday morning golfers.

We discussed how I was feeling and that I wanted to set myself a challenge to achieve before I was 50, I found he was not only feeling the same way but he also felt we should do something together. We talked about various options for a challenge. Following in the footsteps of Ewan McGregor perhaps? We did fancy a motorbike trip, but its been done and both of us had ridden motorbikes since we were 17 years old. Parachute jumping was over all too quickly, but flying, now, that could work. We both liked the idea but what could offer a big enough challenge?

A few years earlier I had seen a flexwing Microlight flying over the M6 near Birmingham. It had a hang glider wing but a small open cockpit with seating for two people and was powered by a 50 cc engine. This sounded just the thing and after throwing around a few ideas, we decided flying a couple of Microlights across Australia from Perth to Brisbane via Darwin, was a great idea.

With more than 3,000 flexwing Microlights registered in Britain, these are the largest single group of light aviation aircraft and now one of the fastest growing sports in the UK. Microlights were originally developed by hang gliding pioneers looking for ways to attach power units to their wings so they could take off without laboriously climbing hills. The forerunners of the modern flex wing Microlight took to the skies in the early 1970s, and since that time, wing, engine and airframe technology has moved on rapidly. Over the last few years Microlight pilots have circumnavigated the globe and set new world records. Despite their fragile appearance, modern Microlight aircraft are incredibly strong and have one of the best safety records in leisure aviation.

The trip we have organised is to challenge ourselves but also to show that anybody, at any age, sat at home thinking of where their life is going, can still get up and achieve if they take the first step.

We believe that in completing this challenge and achieving our aim of raising £100,000 for both Leukaemia research and the Flying Doctor service, we will have pushed ourselves beyond our comfort zone and helped fund important research into the long term cause and support the fantastic service provided by the flying doctors for remote areas.