Retired officer walks 288km in grandmother’s memory

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1 day ago
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Major Ross Hailes hands a cheque to Sunraysia Corps Officer Lieutenant Shaun Featherston after his fundraising walk.

BY ANTHONY CASTLE

Retired Salvation Army officer Major Ross Hailes has completed a 288km walk to honour a grandmother’s legacy and raise money for the Red Shield Appeal.

“We raised just over $10,500 from the walk to support the Salvos in Sunraysia and partner agencies in their work with women and children escaping domestic abuse,” Ross said. “Our family team of five walkers completed the walk in eight days, in extremely hot weather in the high 30s.”

The headstone of Ross Hailes’ grandmother.

Ross, supported by several family members, including his siblings and their spouses, walked from Renmark in South Australia to Underbool in Victoria in memory of his grandmother, Jennie Norton Hailes.

Jennie raised five children as a single parent in Adelaide during the 1920s and 30s. Later in life, she moved to Renmark, where she had lived in her youth when she was married.

The money raised in her memory will support the specific work of assisting single mothers facing financial hardship and/or fleeing domestic abuse in the Sunraysia area.

“The Salvos in Sunraysia and partner agencies will now be resourced to further their work with mothers and families escaping domestic abuse,” Ross says. “We together should thank God and each other for this amazing result.”