Cancer Council community relations coordinator, Bree Kelly, thanked participants and said “I feel like we’ve been through every season here over the weekend” but “I couldn’t be more proud of the spirit displayed here over the weekend – this is why we Relay”.

She added that the fundraising total will continue to climb and explained what it will go towards.

“The goal was to raise $100,000 and this [provisional] figure takes into account online fundraising and the money raised over the weekend, but it will go up over the next couple of weeks with banking open,” she said.

“Funds raised at the Mudgee and Districts Relay For Life are invested into Cancer Council’s world class research, as well as our vital support programs for local people affected by cancer such as our Transport to Treatment program, Living Well after Cancer, our 13 11 20 helpline, and community action programs.”

The overriding message of the event was one of ‘hope’, highlighted in the ceremony of the same name which is not only a solemn time to reflect on those lost to cancer but also – as the title suggests – look towards what can be done to tackle the disease.

Speaker at the Survivors and Carers morning tea, Kris Morrison, said that during the Hope Ceremony at the 2009 event Relayers were told that someone they know would be affected by cancer, two weeks later it was her and her life was saved by a then-experimental treatment.

“I got a phone call at work from the doctor who wanted to see me, I thought it wouldn’t be anything much, and I ended up not going home and ended up being flown to Sydney and diagnosed with a very aggressive form of leukaemia,” she said.

“It was genetic, it was rare and I can’t pass it on to my children – thank goodness – but it was just there, it was like a roulette wheel and you don’t know if or when it kicks in.

“It did, but lucky for me it did when I was 45 because if it had done so in the first 43 years of my life the survival rate was five per cent.

“It’s now 95 per cent and that’s because of research and it’s because of people who raise the money to go to the professors to come up with cures.

“There are people working out there in a lab somewhere that are this close to another break-through in cancer research, the money we raise today could go to that lab and in a few years time there could be someone like me walking around and saying ‘thank you’.”

Donations to the event and teams can still be made online at http://bit.ly/1Oy9gFd