Lismore & Villages Relay for Life was to have taken place this weekend. In fact as you read it may well have been coming to its conclusion with teams and individuals walking for 18 hours non-stop around the SCU oval to raise money for the Cancer Council. Leanne Thompson is the volunteer chairperson of the local organising committee. Digby Hildreth wanted to find out more about Leanne's life and her reasons for working with Relay For Life.

The Lismore & Villages Relay for Life has been postponed, like so many other events, due to the risk to often vulnerable participants from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

And while Leanne Thompson, the volunteer chairperson of the local organising committee, is disappointed the Relay didn't go ahead this weekend, she sees the setback as an opportunity to make it even bigger and better when it takes place later in the year.

The response is typical of her unflappable, can-do enthusiasm.

Leanne is so embedded in the Relay for Life experience that she uses the name of the charitable fundraising pageant as an active, first-person verb.

“I relay because …”, she says – a construction that reveals her colossal – but modestly understated – commitment to the Relay on behalf of the Cancer Council.

And that “because” – the reason behind Leanne’s six years of dedicated service – is that she is possessed of a fierce sense of community.

“I don’t relay because of personal experience. I have had family members who have had cancer, some who have passed from the disease and some who currently have it, and dear friends too. But they weren’t the reason I made the decision that this is what I was going to do.

“What drew me to Relay was the community engagement around it.”

It’s the same power that draws 800 or so people together to form teams, engage in an astonishing variety of activities and walk for miles to raise funds – and awareness – for the greater good.

Besides performing a service for the people of Lismore and surrounds, Leanne’s more personal motivation is as a parent, a wish to communicate her fundamental values.

(Leanne and her son Braxton Marsh heading to the wet 2012 Relay For Life)

“I want to set an example to my children: this is a great way to show them that not everyone is as fortunate as us and that we should support everyone,” she says.

The public-spiritedness was modelled for her by her own mother – a nurse.

Leanne and her brother and sister grew up on a beef farm near Coraki, where their parents still live.

(Leanne on the farm at Coraki with her Dad)

“We came from a small community and I saw that my mother was often involved with fundraisers through the Coraki Hospital, where she worked. I liked the sense of community, the feeling of engagement that my mum’s involvement produced.

“I was very lucky to have her as a role model.”



(Leanne and her mum, )

Her introduction to Relay for Life came through her mother too: they took part in it several times together, walking to raise funds, before she joined the organising team.

That was in 2014, when Leanne was working for the Woolworths subsidiary Masters Home Improvement as their community engagement co-ordinator in Lismore.

“We were encouraged to go out and engage with community groups and their activities and I ran into (veteran cancer carer) Don Campbell at the Square. He was on the Relay for Life committee selling raffle tickets and I thought ‘this is something Masters could get involved in’. I ended up on the committee and here we are!”

Leanne had joined Woolworths while she was in Year 10 at Trinity Catholic College in Lismore, following primary school at St Joseph’s Coraki.

Trinity provided another great example of service to others, she says. “It now has more volunteering programmes in place than when we were there but even then it was very community orientated.”

Her eldest child, eight-year-old Mark, is presently at Summerland Christian College, which, again, “is very family orientated, a very loving, supportive environment”.

After graduating Leanne started a business degree at Southern Cross but gave it up after 12 months.

“It wasn’t for me at the time so I deferred the course and didn’t pick it up until this year.”

She has re-enrolled, again in business, with plans of majoring in Human Resources.

“I have a diploma in HR and have done a lot in that space but I want to further my learning. It’s a good fit for me now, to be busy, because I need to be mentally active.”

They say that if you want a job done, give it to a busy person, which means the Relay is in good hands, because Leanne’s studies come on top of some part-time book-keeping, parenting Mark, plus a toddler and a nine-month-old, as well as steering-committee work for the Cancer Council.

She is one of six members across NSW to liaise between the Council and the Relay’s executive committee members, with responsibility for the Northern region, from Tweed to Taree and out to Tamworth.

(the 2020 Relay For Life organising committee)

“The aim is to mitigate problems the Relays might be facing and also to celebrate their wins. So if someone has something that’s working really well in their community, we look at how can we duplicate that in other communities that are similar,” she says.

Like the Lismore & Villages Relay chairperson job, the role is voluntary.

It’s fortunate she has the support of her husband, Shane Marsh, who with his brother co-owns Ongmac Trading, the agricultural and construction equipment suppliers in town.

But Leanne’s a thoroughly modern woman, and kept her maiden name when she married in 2008 – “living on the edge”, she jokes, for those days, when it was still quite unusual.

“I just thought ‘this is my name and it’s the name I’ve always had and I don’t think marrying should change that’. Also, my mum is Italian, and in Italian culture they don’t change their surnames.”



(Leanne with husband Shane Marsh and their three children)

The 2020 Relay is her fourth: how has she seen it change over the years?

“The event nationwide has evolved over its lifetime, in response to the feedback from the community – and perhaps nowhere more so than in Lismore,” she says.

“When it started it was more regimented: everyone in the team had to walk, they had to stay the full 24 hours and a team member had to be always on the track. I think that may have scared some people away.

“We’ve been encouraged by the Cancer Council to adapt it to what suits the community. When it started in Lismore it was a 24-hour event. Community feedback saw that change to 18 hours. We go from three in the afternoon till nine the next morning, mainly because if we went from nine to nine it’s the hottest part of the day, people don’t want to do that.

“Lismore people like the fact that it is theirs to do their way and it’s become a very much looser type fit. We have really tried to emphasise that people can come for one lap or for 100, come for one hour or stay the whole event, join a team or come as an individual. It’s your choice, because you’re the participant, you participate how you want.

“So it’s become more inclusive. We want to make sure that everyone who wanted to be a part of it in any way, could.”

Even raising money is not a pre-requisite to joining in.

“Relay for Life in my eyes is a community awareness-raising event … awareness about the Cancer Council services available, and its role in in prevention and advocacy, its presence in the community and what we do to assist people.

“That awareness includes the money that is spent in research, and how that affects our local patients and their families, and how their journeys are changed because of what has been put into that research – the testing, the medications and services that are now available that weren’t in the past, all because of funding from the Cancer Council.

“We encourage people to fundraise, but if they don’t want to, we encourage them to go to someone else’s fundraiser and have a good old time.

“The event has also grown, particularly in Lismore, to be more of a festival-style event, with food trucks, a staged area, bands and DJs.

“It still has the basics – the opening ceremony, and a Survivors and Carers opening lap, but the Lismore committee has gone a little bit rogue, again based on community feedback, around the opening lap,” she says.

“We’ve added ‘Those Living with Cancer’ to the name, because not everyone can resonate with the term ‘survivor’. Everyone is on their own journey and that journey is very fluid, and ever changing. Someone with a Stage 4 diagnosis, for instance, can’t relate to being a survivor.”

With dusk comes the Hope ceremony, “when the world stands still, music and everything stops, it becomes dark and we celebrate and remember the people we have lost”.

It’s very sombre, people are profoundly moved, she says. Then there’s the lap of silence in the dark. “It’s really special, Very respectful … very lovely. If someone attends, that will change them.

The ‘lift-up’ event follows. “In the past it was fireworks, but we’re not doing that this year, again, in response to feedback, particularly from Friends of the Koala, with the sanctuary being so close to Southern Cross University, where the Relay is held.

“This year’s event is still under wraps and will be announced on the day. It’s a big secret, to bring everyone ‘back’, before a band rocks us on into the night, and people continue walking.”

The walking is symbolic of the everyday reality that cancer patients and their families face, Leanne says – “every step of the day, every minute of the day, rain, hail or shine it’s with them. We walk to honour that”.

As is common with people like Leanne when they’re asked what make them so public-spirited, she struggles to give an answer. And when she does, it’s more about what she can do than about personal qualities.

“You have to be organised, and have the ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, to negotiate with situations and be attentive to the needs of the committee, the community and individuals.”

(Leanne with Tilly Howe, 2019 NSW Cancer Council Young Hero of the Year Award Winner)

To which could be added unselfish, humble, inclusive, good humoured, generous and, as her response to the relay’s postponement shows, adaptable.

Teams can still register and fundraise, subject to COVID-19 restrictions, to help Relay reach its fundraising goal.