putting melanoma on the map
A real-life Australian story of loss, grief, love, hope and triumph.
What would spur a mother to trek thousands of miles across rural and remote areas of Australia on a pushbike and horses?
Maura lived through every parent’s worst nightmare. She came out the other side on fire with a vision to create change by bringing a story to young people in rural and remote areas across the nation. That story is the journey of her first-born daughter Hannah, who tragically lost her life at 20 to melanoma.
The legacy of Hannah’s life and the journey Maura embarked on with ride4acure has left an imprint.
An ordinary woman, quietly doing extraordinary things to help raise the health literacy of young Australians in rural and remote areas.
ride4acure-Origin Story takes readers back to the beginning where it all began. Maura shares with readers the seed that took root in her heart to put one foot in front of the other and ride4acure.
Maura grew up in a large family of nine kids. Her playground, the travelling stock routes of Victoria and New South Wales, droving livestock with her parents Marie and Kevin Luxford. Much of her primary education was by correspondence in the 60’s and ‘70s with her Mum as her teacher. In the late ‘70’s Maura managed to get kicked out of one of the worst high schools in the state and finished Year 10 droving out the back of Bourke with her dad and 1400 head of cattle. Despite that she went on to graduate from university twenty years later with a degree in social sciences. Since then, she’s had a long career in community development and education.
Horses and livestock held significance throughout her life including seven years running Full Circle Horsemanship where hundreds of students came through a self-leadership and communications program using horses. The classroom was their farm at the foot of Mount Sebastopol in what is now the Willi Willi National Park. This thousand plus acre outdoor classroom was the ideal environment for young and old students to reset and reconnect to life and their community.
Maura calls the Macleay Valley home and has spent over thirty years living on Dunghutti Country and is now on fertile acres on Euroka Creek just out of town.
When not at her day-job, she’s planting habitat trees, growing food and flowers, sipping tea, watching birds and wildlife in her garden or off on an adventure on her motorbike.
For more than twenty years Maura has worked in vocational education and remains passionate about the transformational power of education. For her social and community work she was voted Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012, Woman of the Macleay Award in 2012 and Oxley Woman of the Year in 2013. She was inducted into the International Long Riders Guild for her solo pack horse trek with her three incredible horses Meg, Billy and Wrangler in 2010, where she rode over 1800 kms from Kempsey in New South Wales to Melbourne Victoria, the long way.
Her greatest achievement in life is being Mum to Hannah, Esther and Joe. Humans she’s proud of.
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