Francis' story | Conquering the Hill
October 19, 2026
"Frank the Tank's" Fundraising Challenge
Francis, also known as ‘Frank the Tank’, is taking on a gruelling endurance challenge at the end of this month, all to honour his Dad, who passed away from MND, and fundraise for MND Victoria.
He’s hoping to endure from the event’s start on October 31st, until the 4th of November—his dad’s birthday.
Read his story below.
The best way to describe my dad is that he was a host. If you were in Mum and Dad’s house, Dad was always taking care of you, getting you a drink or something to eat. It didn’t matter who you were, he’d take care of you like you were family.
He was just very kind, generous, and always happy.
Even when he was diagnosed with MND, he almost never complained—even though his was an excruciating experience.
The type of MND he had was really aggressive, and it was incredibly painful for him. Every week his symptoms would change or get slightly worse; it was hard to keep up with it. All the processes that exist were slower than he needed: getting a wheelchair takes 3 weeks, because you have to organise an OT, get their approval, and then by the time a wheelchair or anything else we’ve arranged has arrive, it was no longer relevant to Dad because his condition had worsened.
I don’t think it’s common that MND is painful, because people didn’t really know how to deal with it. Just moving any muscle in his body caused pain, so the aids for lifting him from a chair to wheelchair or things like that were incredibly painful. Sitting became painful. It was quite a large thing to deal with.
Despite the immense pain, he didn’t get angry at anyone. He did his best to put up with it and tried not to be a fuss. The only thing that really changed is that he wasn’t able to be the same host that he had always been: now everyone was doing things for him.
He still tried to be as independent as possible, of course, like with drinking, he didn’t want someone to have to hold a drink for him all the time. And he still emotionally took care of other people; he was always checking in to make sure that we were okay, or to see if I was taking care of Mum. Always, his biggest concern was other people.
We’re a pretty close family, so we were all hands on deck throughout his disease. Start to finish was about 9 months, and we treated those 9 months as really being about spending as much time as possible with Dad.
He’s a man who loved food, travelling, his sport (he loved Melbourne Football Club), and adored his wife.
Mum and Dad were always inseparable. Everything they did was with each other, they were just super close. There were fights about having the assistive bed in the house, because they didn’t want to have separate beds and stuff like that. They did end up having the bed in the bedroom, but they made sure it fit with mum being in the room too.
Both of my parents have always been young at heart. The type of parents who were happy for all of my friends to come over, and then they’d join us for poker night and things like that. And all of my friends loved hanging out with them.
Because of the unpredictability and the rapid nature of his progression we couldn’t plan to go away, or for anything too big, so we wanted to keep bringing experiences to the home for him that he would enjoy.
A lot of the experiences were food related. Cooking really nice things or picking up really nice things for him try. At least once a week we’d have a big grazing platter nice or new or exciting foods for him, then we’d all sit around the table together. We’d just make it a really nice time, and just make it a bit special for him.
I knew early on that I wanted to do a fundraiser for MND Victoria. They were there from the start, and they were fantastic through it all at helping us get the care we needed.
The main thing was just answering the questions we had, really. The fact our advisor could see what was going on and was on our side made a big difference. We didn’t want to be drama queens about something, so being able to ask if we should be alarmed by something was great. Googling is the worst. At the start, that made such a difference, just being able to sit down with someone and talk to them about it.
Because what Dad went through was incredibly painful and challenging, I felt like anything I did also needed to be incredibly challenging. Doing anything less would be almost disrespectful to Dad.
Hardcore Harry’s King of the Hill popped up, and I was initially just speaking with my wife because it posed a good challenge. Then we realised that Dad’s birthday would be a few days after it started and that seemed just perfect.
It’s a last-man-standing type of endurance event, where every competitor will have an hour to complete a 4.2km loop with approximately 300 metres of climbing. Once that hour is done, they do it again, until they physically can’t. Every hour, on the hour, until there’s only one person left.
Getting to Dad’s birthday is a perfect goal.
It’s going to be incredibly difficult, but that’s the goal. I’ve set my fundraising target to $10,000 for MND Victoria, but really, the goal is to make it to Dad’s birthday.
When you’re out there for that long your brain doesn’t really work properly, you’re mentally fatigued, and the simpler I can keep it, the easier it is.
I’m hoping to be able to complete each loop in 48 minutes, giving myself 12 minutes every hour to power nap, eat, change shoes, and do anything else I need to keep going.
My wife will be joining a crew of about 6 people who will be supporting me each day. Just like how people living with MND need a group of people supporting them, anyone doing an event like this needs a crew of people to support. All of them are lifesavers, they’re fantastic.
Right now, I’m feeling good. I’m feeling excited. I just want to start. I enjoy doing things like this, that push me, so I get a chance to do something I enjoy, but it’ll also be hard and tough and emotional and I’m excited to get out there.
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