When Wendy Aitkenhead walks the track at Bendigo's Relay for Life cancer fundraiser her mind goes "right back to the beginning".
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"To the start of my cancer journey and how lucky I am ... how wonderful it is that I'm still here to be able to do it," she said.
Ms Aitkenhead was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. The Bendigo 2024 Relay for Life on Saturday, April 20 was her twentieth event.
"For me personally it gave me something to focus on after my treatment," Ms Aitkenhead said.
"Plus I do actually really love the spirit of the relay out here."
That spirit of the Bendigo relay - which celebrated 25 years on Saturday and has raised $3.8 for the Cancer Council since its inception - could be put down to a four-letter word, event chair Teresa Jones said.
"Hope," Ms Jones said.
"If you don't have hope, you don't have anything."
For those lost, but also those who survived
Ms Jones had been on the committee of the Bendigo Relay for Life since 2002. Cancer had touched her in many ways since then, she said.
"I had breast cancer in 2012 ... I am a lucky survivor," she said. "And then my husband passed away in 2014 from lung cancer."
Ms Jones said she thinks about him when she walks the relay track.
"My husband was able to walk with me as my carer, but I wasn't able to walk with him as his carer ... he was diagnosed two weeks before the relay," she said.
"So when you're on the track you think about the people that you've lost, but also the people that have survived."
'We are helping them in the way that we can'
While the Bendigo event had shrunk from around 70 teams in its first year to 21 in 2024, Ms Jones said she had seen the real-world effects the relay had.
"We are finding that a lot of people even though they're diagnosed they're living a lot longer after their diagnosis," she said.
"So I suppose that means that we are helping them in the way that we can."
The 2024 event raised over $70,000 for the Cancer Council, with walkers and joggers relaying from 9.30am to 10.30pm.
This year's event coincided with the launch SunSmart's early skin cancer detection drive, funded by the Victorian Department of Health.
The campaign would run for eight weeks in the Loddon Mallee region to urge people living in the region to check their skin and to see a GP should they notice any changes.
