He’s a multi-multi-multi-millionaire who likes to come across as a man of the people, and today he was doing his best to prove that he is.

Renowned train spotter, public transport user and Prius driver Malcolm Turnbull was out in his electorate of Wentworth today physically removing his campaign posters from lamp posts with one other helper.

I spotted Turnbull striding along the streets with requisite equipment to remove the posters that were then dumped in the back of a rental ute driven by an assistant.

Man of the people and member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, in campaign mode

When asked if Turnbull was actually doing the hard yakka himself, the driver said “yes”, with a big grin.

After a short-lived dummy spit in which he announced he was quitting politics before quitting on quitting, Turnbull won almost a 10 percent swing and netted 60 percent of the vote, which explains why he looked like the cat that got the canary on Q&A on Monday night.

ALP rival Steven Lewis had almost the same percentage swing against him winning just 14,416 of the votes to Turnbull’s 41,688.

Turnbull’s leadership intentions indubitably will have been reignited by the unequivocal victory. But he will have to bide his time following Coalition leader Tony Abbott’s amazing resurrection of the party’s failing fortunes in the nine months since he beat the eastern suburbs silvertail to the top spot.

Tonight, the man from Point Piper is taking on regular rival Tanya Plibersek, the ALP’s member for Sydney, at a “politics in the pub” event at The Clock Hotel in Surry Hills.

Plibersek had a 4.62 percent swing against her and scored slightly more than 26,000 of the votes cast in the inner city electorate.

Should be feisty.

Because it’s election day, because this has been one of the wackiest, funniest, most insane, fun and entertaining Federal election campaigns in decades, because Mark Latham was rolled gold for all the wrong reasons, because PM Julia Gillard released doves (yes, she really did, and not a magician in sight), because former PM Kevin Rudd’s axing turned the ALP into a comic tragedy, and because Opposition leader Tony Abbott was armed with a Glock and stun gun, I bring you some funny highlights and observations of the day.

Whose bacon did you save?

Sydney butcher Victor Churchill getting into the 2010 Federal Election spirit

Let’s start with this brilliant window display in one of Australia’s best and most innovative butcher shops, Victor Churchill.

Two pigs – one wearing a red wig a la PMJG, the other in red Speedos like the LOTO wears and a sign: “Vote 1, whose bacon will you save?” Brilliant.

One shop assistant told me people asked if the pigs were real. She’s Irish. No beating around the bush. “It’s a butcher shop. What do they think?”

Well, there were a lot of people who bought the line about former President George W. Bush’s “plastic turkey” at Thanksgiving when visiting the troops in the Middle East.

Election window at Sydney butcher Victor Churchill

But back to the funnies: this from smart Tweeter @WogBlogger: “Overheard in polling queue in Wentworth: “Would you like a Greens how to vote card”? “No … second thoughts, I’ll take one. For comedy value.” Comedy gold.

Wentworth, of course, is the seat held by train spotter Malcolm Turnbull.

Style guru and social commentator @MelissaHoyer tweeted this: “Sad there r no sausages at Paddington St Francis of Assisi school. ‘It’s Paddington. They have sushi’, said one queue wag . .”

Another Tweeter, @marksmithers came up with this: “Outside polling station amusing myself by handing Australian Sex Party how to vote cards back to Family First campaigners #ausvotes”

And then there was this in The Australian by sharp election observer Samantha Maiden: “There was a touch of George W. Bush, a moment of Vladimir Putin, bare-chested, Old Spice-style—“I’m on a horse”—to the magic photographs of Tony Abbott let loose in a Campbelltown cop shop after midnight.”

The idea of Abbott as Old Spice man is too delicious for words and the rest of Maiden’s piece is a Must Read.

If you like your humour dripping with irony, how about former Labor hard-man and self-confessed Pinocchio, Graham Richardson who wrote in the same organ today: “I am confused…I am in utter despair”. Read Richo’s confession about Labor and PM JG’s woes.

Happy voting.

With the Australian federal election campaign in full swing and with Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying she “fully supports” the current 1550-strong deployment to Afghanistan, it’s worth focusing on the families of the brave Diggers who have lost their lives in the Middle East.

Since Australia deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, our nation has lost 17 soldiers – the most recent six in the last two months as the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists increase their deadly campaign of burying improvised explosive devices in the countryside.

I recently spent some time with Victoria Hopkins, the widow of Corporal Mathew Hopkins, for a story in the latest edition of sunday magazine.

Victoria and Mathew Hopkins

I had written about her husband shortly after he was killed in action in March last year, and again when the Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston released a report into his death.

Victoria Hopkins, who is now 24, is one of the bravest women I’ve met. When her husband was killed, she had been married a mere five weeks and had a five-week-old son, Alex.

Like many wives, husbands, partners, parents and family of the serving members of the Australian Defence Force, the unimaginable possibility had lingered in the back of her mind and she lived with the constant dread of that unwelcomed knock on the door ever since he left home in October 2008.

“Mat told me in his last email that he was going to try to ring me as soon as he got back from patrol. I hadn’t heard from him at all that day, I thought he must have been busy. I was actually up typing an email to him when there was a knock at the door.”

Three officers wearing their full dress uniforms and medals broke the news. “It felt like I had all the energy sucked out of me, like what should have been a happy time in my life – being married and having a baby and being a family – was just suddenly taken away by one bullet. They said it was instant, that there was nothing that could have been done to save Mat.”

Every time another Digger has died, Victoria is reminded of her loss in more ways than one.

It happened most recently when 23-year-old Private Nathan Bewes, who was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, was killed by an IED on Friday, July 16, 2010, taking the loss of Australian lives to 17.

Mathew Hopkins and his newborn son, Alex

And yet there is no easy way to cope, each new aching tragedy adds to the last, she told me, especially when she thinks that her young son will not grow up with his proud father. These are the small things that the rest of us don’t know about, but should.

“You just learn to move your life around these sort of things. There is no real way of moving on because it’s always going to be there; you just learn to accept that these sort of things can happen.”

Importantly, though, she has beautiful memories of her time with Mat. She smiles remembering the night they stayed up going through the alphabet from A-Z thinking of names for their unborn son (they chose Alexander Robert John, because it’s a strong name and will stand the test of ages); the night they had a “Sounds of Silence” dinner in the desert under Uluru, listening to an Aboriginal guide telling stories about the constellation; how thrilled Mat was to claim the honour of being the first to change their newborn son’s nappy; and how Mat loved her weekly care packages.

“I sent Mat a can of Spam once and he rang me up and told me off,” she says with a laugh. “For Christmas I sent him a gingerbread house which actually remained in tact all the way there, and a triple choc pudding that he ate in one go, and his Top Gear magazine – he loved his Top Gear magazine.”

She laughs at the folly of him taking on patrol a 1kg bag of lollies she sent so he could share them with his mates. His fully-loaded pack already weighed 60kg but Corporal Hopkins would not leave base without his sweet reminder of home and the woman who loved him.

Corporal Hopkins on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan

They wanted two or three kids and decided to settle in Darwin, where her husband hoped to continue his rising Army career.

“Mat and I had discussed that our kids were going to join the defence force if they didn’t have continuous study like TAFE or uni or they didn’t have a job. That was our decision,” she says.

Those dreams for a shared future were shattered by one single bullet.

But, as Victoria says, she has her memories and a treasured wooden box made by the Army carpenters in Afghanistan who deployed with her husband. It contains dozens of letters written by his mates.

“Reading the great things that they said about Mat really opened my eyes up more as to who he really was. There was a side of Mat that I knew but the side of Mat they were talking about was the side I didn’t know yet. They said Mat was a great leader, he was a funny guy, which I knew about, and it just made it very special hearing and reading those things and knowing that Mat meant more to a lot of other people as well as to Alex and me.”

This is Victoria’s story, as it appeared in the most recent edition of the sunday magazine (July 18, 2010) which is inserted in The Sunday Herald Sun in Victoria, and The Sunday Telegraph in NSW.

Lest we forget.

Victoria’s story, as it appeared in sunday magazine on July 18, 2010

C.D.B. Bryan's first non-fiction book, Friendly Fire

The literary world lost a true legend this week with the death of critically acclaimed author and journalist, Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, the author of Friendly Fire, one of the most seminal books about the Vietnam War.

Better known as C.D.B Bryan, the author died at his home in Connecticut on the east coast of the United States on Tuesday with his adored wife, Mairi Bryan, by his side.

Bryan, who has two children from his first marriage and one from his second, had been battling cancer. He was 73.

His loss is enormous both professionally and personally.

Courtlandt was a mentor to many younger authors – including myself. He generously offered incredible support, encouragement and wisdom particularly to first-time writers.

When I began work on my first book, Beyond Bad, The Life and Crimes of Katherine Knight, I visited Bryan at his home in Guilford, CT, and asked the obvious: how do you do it?

I’ll never forget what he said, in his fabulous east-coast accent that would have been at home in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. “Simple, shoulders forward, eyes down, type. Oh, and if you get stuck, a martini at midday helps.”

Months later we corresponded about the art of writing; about structure, tone, intent and narrative.

“The book you write is never the book your first draft turns out to be,” he wrote to me. “Just get the words down and worry about polishing later.  The art is in the artlessness, in making it look easy and inevitable and, as Salinger said, ‘You just sit down and write the book you would most like to read yourself.  Dare to do it. Trust your heart,’ etc.”

Harper Prize winning book, P.S. Wilkinson, written by the late C.D.B. Bryan

He spoke from the experience of having written at least 10 books and scores of magazine articles.

Despite his impressive body of work, it is Friendly Fire for which he is best known. Compelling and insightful, it has been repeatedly cited in professional military studies.

Bryan, who had served in the US Army in the peacetime occupation of Korea from 1958-1960, and again in the Berlin Crisis of 1961, focused on the death of Corporal Michael Mullen in Vietnam in 1970 and the subsequent radicalisation of his all-American farmer parents, Gene and Peg, who became vociferous anti-war protestors in their home state of Iowa.

Corporal Mullen was a draftee and killed by American artillery shelling, aka friendly fire, which is anything but.

The book is an aching report about the loss of a child that could have been avoided and the impact of his death on his parents, both of whom lose their faith in their country and it’s leaders and don’t believe their son’s death was accidental.

Friendly Fire began as a feature article for The New Yorker magazine, then under the editorship of legendary William Shawn, but by the time Bryan had finished interviewing the Mullen family and many of Michael Mullen’s fellow soldiers – including the yet-to-be famous General (Stormin’) Norman Schwarzkopf, he decided to extend the single article into a three-part series and finally a book.

The best-selling book was critically acclaimed and turned into an award-winning television film starring Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty as Mullens’ parents, and Sam Waterston (from Law and Order fame) as Bryan. Not for nothing did it win six Emmy Awards.

Actor Sam Waterston from Law and Order fame, who played C.D.B. Bryan in the telemovie based on his book, Friendly Fire

Bryan, a Yale University graduate and the stepson of writer John O’Hara, was also an accomplished novelist and his first fictional work, P.S. Wilkinson, won the prestigious Harper Prize in 1965. A later novel, Beautiful Women; Ugly Scenes is one of the most astute – and painful – books about a marriage that is failing only to end in a bitter divorce.

A skilled writer, he could turn his hand to any subject – fictional and non-fiction. He wrote Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T; The National Air and Space Museum and The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. As well, he wrote for various magazines.

Cover of Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes by author C.D.B. Bryan

And there was so much more to Bryan beyond the pages.

A bon vivant of the highest order, he had wit, charm and effortless style. He was a native storyteller and brilliant raconteur who used satire and wit in equal measure and like his wife, Mairi, could be counted on to be an engaging dinner companion.

I last saw Courtlandt on New Year’s day two years ago after the Bryans threw another of their renowned parties to welcome the arrival of 2007. He smoked, drank and cursed in equal abandon and, despite not being in great health, was in great spirits.

I’m told he was drinking his beloved martini shortly before he died.

He will be sorely missed, and always remembered.

Vale, Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan.

My sincere condolences to Mairi and family.

The sign in backbencher Malcolm Turnbull's electoral office yesterday when Tony Abbott was reshuffling his frontbench

A week is a long time in politics, but it’s not long enough for the Liberal Party’s new bomb-chucker, Malcolm Turnbull, to build a bridge and get over his lost leadership.

A quick stroll by his electoral office on the borders of Edgecliff, Double Bay and Woollahra yesterday revealed that while Tony Abbott was shuffling his front bench and reshaping his cabinet, Turnbull still was touting himself as the “Leader of the Opposition”, as this picture shows.

Not one, but three posters with Turnbull’s old title were displayed in the windows on the Wentworth electorate office fronting on to Edgecliff Road – while his beaming dial was on show in the front window (without the grand title).

The front entry to Malcolm Turnbull's office in the seat of Wentworth yesterday

Exactly one week earlier, Abbott ousted him from the top Coalition job by one vote and since then Turnbull has been on a mission to denounce Abbott and others in the party who he believes are climate change “deniers”.

On Monday Turnbull launched a scathing attack on his blog in which he called Abbott’s alternative to the emissions trading scheme “bullshit”.

Turnbull, not known for his shyness, said that the party was now without “integrity”, had no policy on climate change, and that he would be voting with the government when the ETS bill goes back before the Senate in February, 2010.

Meanwhile, Abbott has promised to give the Government “the fright of its life” with his new team.

And if you believe the chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ranjendra Pachauri, Abbott was already having an impact, with his scepticism motivating other nay-sayers around the world.

I’m betting Turnbull would hate that: Abbott being recognised on the global stage less than a week after ascending the throne.

The new leader of the Federal Opposition, Tony Abbott

Within minutes of Tony Abbott’s unexpected ascent to the leadership of the embattled Liberal Party yesterday, the women in the Twitterverse that I follow were baying for blood. Abbott’s blood, and lots of it.

They were furious that the man who has been dubbed Captain Catholic or the Mad Monk had toppled the “progressive” ETS-champion Malcolm Turnbull by a single vote.

The invective was so instant and so prolific that it prompted me to Tweet shortly after 10am: “Boy, oh boy, Tony Abbott has a lot of ground to make up to the Twitterverse women – there is anger out there, Mr Abbott.”

Popular Tweeter and influential columnist Mia Freedman wanted to know Abbott’s position on contraception and IVF, pretty much around the same time she Tweeted, “there are still some women who don’t know where their own clitoris is”. She said Abbott’s leadership equalled a bad day for women.

A few months ago I ran into Abbott and we were chatting about IVF and he said he was for babies, any which way they came.

As for contraception, well, as we all know from the man himself, he didn’t use it – he has publicly spoken and written about the unknown son he wrongly thought he fathered in his teenaged years. Not using contraception doesn’t mean he’s against it; neither does it mean he’s for it.

I can’t recall anyone asking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, another committed church-going Christian about his position on contraception, abortion and IVF.

For the record, Abbott voted against removing the restricted goods provisions from the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 on the abortion drug RU-486 in 2005. But he was not Robinson Crusoe when it came to the conscience vote. And he wasn’t the first health minister to impose the restrictions.

Another professionally successful and clever woman, Marino Go, Tweeted: “I would rather eat my first born than vote for Abbott (with apologies to my first born)”. She later assured me the baby – now 16 – was safe. Phew!

Yet another typed: “Abbott once said that abortion should be outlawed in this country. People have such short memories. 1950’s here we come again!!”

Award winning journalist Tracy Grimshaw from A Current Affair

Last night Tracy Grimshaw pulled on the gloves and asked Abbott – on his first appearance as leader on A Current Affair - about his position on abortion.

He answered he was for “safe, legal, rare”. Who isn’t?

Somehow, Tweetchicks, I don’t think we’re headed back to the 1950s, even though Abbott does want to reintroduce fault-based divorce alongside the no-fault system, but only for those crazy masochists who prefer the harder, blame-game route to divorce.

Another popular Tweeter, journalist Julie Posetti, reckoned that Turnbull sounded 10 times better in defeat than Abbott with his “divisive and robotic” style.

Yet another wrote: “Oh God, Abbott’s even worse than I thought.”

The attacks were loud, many, and varied (I’m not even going to address those by the anti-Abbott blokes on Twitter, of whom there are also many).

What is it that makes some women hate Abbott? Is it because he’s proudly conservative? Or a Catholic? Would they be so vehemently anti-Buddhist, anti-Anglican, or anti-Muslim?

And is the antipathy rational? Or is it, as Miranda Devine wrote in her excellent Sydney Morning Herald column today, just that the chattering classes don’t like him?

A few months ago, Abbott launched his book, Battlelines, and as I wrote back then, Melbourne University Press boss Louise Adler agreed he was the “Liberal Party’s intellectual”. And she’s not known as a conservative.

Abbott likes women. He supports paid maternity leave, has taken part in the annual Pollie Pedal to raise money for breast cancer research (and other charities), and has raised three lovely daughters.

He even admitted in Parliament yesterday that the “flirting” with the Deputy Prime minister, Julia Gillard, must now stop.

She giggled.

Firting with the enemy? Yeah, Abbott’s really down on women.

Intrepid climbers taking on Mt Kilimanjaro for The Humpty Dumpty Foundation in August 2009

The sons of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay – the legendary Everest team that first conquered the world’s highest peak in 1953 – are planning their first joint assault on Mt Kilimanjaro.

Peter Hillary and Jamling Tenzing Norgay will lead a team of climbers to the peak of Tanzania’s highest free-standing mountain in July next year.

And the accomplished mountaineers, who have each twice followed in their famous fathers’ footsteps up Everest, are making the ascent for The Humpty Dumpty children’s charity in Sydney.

“The Hillary-Norgay summit of Everest back in the 1950s is a great story and for the two sons to be climbing Kilimanjaro together is pretty special, particularly as they are doing it for charity,” Humpty’s chairman and founder Paul Francis told me. “Peter Hillary is really excited about it, and so am I. It will take the event to a whole new level and hopefully get more people involved.”

The New Zealand-based Hillary, 55, climbed Everest for the first time in 1990 making him and Sir Edmund the first father-son duo to make the summit. Norgay, 44, has twice scaled the epic peak the Sherpa people call The Mother Goddess of the World – the first time in 1996 during the most disastrous climbing season on the mountain when 15 people died.

Norgay wrote the best-selling book, Touching My Father’s Soul, which gave a compelling account of the disasters from the Sherpas’ points of view. American writer Jon Krakauer was also on the ascent with another adventure team and wrote Into Thin Air about the trek in which five of his fellow mountaineers died.

Norgay, who lives in Nepal, and Hillary recreated their fathers’ journey in 2003 when they took on Everest together to mark the 50^th anniversary of that celebrated first summit of Chomolungma as the Tibetans call the mountain.

The 2010 Kilimanjaro trek follows The Humpty Dumpty Foundation’s first successful summit of Kili in August this year, which raised $1.35 million for the charity.

Federal Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey and Francis, who was awarded the Order of Australia in the recent Queen’s Birthday honours list, led the inaugural group of 22 trekkers including Paralympian Kelly Cartwright, Sunrise co-host David Koch, and paediatrician Jonny Taitz.

They made the summit under a full moon on August 5 after 12 hours of climbing.

The Humpty Kili Club at the Uhuru Peak 5890mt above sea level

“It was harder than anyone imagined, even after spending the previous five days acclimatising to the altitude,” says Francis. “It was the hardest thing we have ever done. Equally though, it’s also one of the most amazing things we’ve ever done.”

And now the charity, which buys vital life saving medical equipment for more than 60 children’s wards in hospitals around Australia and East Timor, is preparing to do it all again under the guidance of Norgay and Hillary, and possibly Hillary’s daughter Amelia.

“There’s an enormous amount of support for it,” says Francis.

marie claire Australia October 2009 cover

Big question: is the sunburnt country with its lands of sweeping plains littered with red-necks, racists and bigots?

I’ve addressed that question in a new story in the latest edition of Australia’s fashion magazine, marie claire, that hit newstands today – the one with Rachel McAdams on the cover.

In the aftermath of the violent and racist attacks on foreign students from Asia, the words “racist” and “Australian” have been used often in the same sentence, but what does the evidence show?

“When people make snap decisions, they fall back on their prejudices,” says Australian National University Professor Andrew Leigh, who conducted a survey to determine the level of discrimination faced by job applicants of various ethnicities.

The results of his survey might just surprise you.

Meanwhile, it was heartening to realise that Australia has one of the biggest hearts among western countries when it comes to accepting immigrants under the Federal humanitarian Resettlement Program. In the 2007 – 2008 year, the nation welcomed a total of 13,014 people from a variety of countries.

Sure, we could do more, but it’s not a bad start on a per capita basis.

Meanwhile, marie claire closes on a tribute I’ve written about on one of America’s finest and most poised former First Ladies, Betty Ford.

Former First Lady of the United States, Betty Ford, during her days in the White House

Perhaps not surprisingly, the 91-year-old will be remembered for what she did with her years in the White House, as well as afterwards including establishing the respected Betty Ford Center for the treatment of people with drugs and alcohol dependence.

Disarmingly open and unashamedly outspoken, she was a feminist who directed the women’s lib movement to a new audience of conservative stay-at-home women when it was strategically focused on the already radicalised bra-burners and younger women at universities; she was an advocate for people who, like her, suffered addiction to alcohol and drugs – legal and illegal; and she was determinedly honest following the scandalous presidency of Richard Nixon, whom her husband replaced.

But my favourite discovery was when Mrs Ford, in the very early days of Gerald Ford’s presidency, stunned the media and the world when she revealed that – shock, horror – she absolutely would sleep in the same bed as him. At the time, the president a kept a separate bedroom from his wife. What a brazen hussy!

For more on whether our lucky country is a racist country and to discover the wonderful life of an incredible woman, pick up the latest copy of marie claire.

Channel Seven supremo David Leckie

Talk about the health of Channel Seven’s David Leckie has been in the news lately, but the television executive looked in fine form dining with Aussie Rules boss Andrew Demetriou at Machiavelli today.

Also at the table were Seven’s director, Bruce McWilliam, and another AFL man. Clearly, given they were dining at Sydney’s power trattoria, they wanted the meeting known. Seven and the Ten Network have the free-to-air broadcast rights for the 2009 Australian Football League season.

Leckie was sinking red wine with his luncheon companions. Perhaps they were chatting about Seven’s delayed broadcast of games, or viewer complaints? Demetriou, a former player with North Melbourne, was the first to leave.

Earlier this month, The Australian newspaper’s Amanda Meade wrote about Leckie returning to work after a three week break amid much discussion about his physical condition and “morbid state of mind”.

“Last month the Seven titan was so unsteady on his feet at a Sunrise party at Sydney’s Star City casino that questions were raised about whether he had fully recovered from an illness last April which left him in an induced coma for 11 days,” Meade wrote. “He severed a finger and the complications from that put him in a coma.”

Well, having seen Leckie today, he was steady on his feet and he looked like the three week break had done some good. As he revealed a little more than a week ago, he started seeing a personal trainer and has been trying to get fit.

Meanwhile, Machiavelli shows no signs of losing its appeal. On the next table to Leckie et al was a sartorially resplendent Barry Humphries, and son Oscar, who is currently editing the Australian edition of Britain’s Spectator magazine.

As for me? I was dining with former NSW Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski, board member of the kids’ charity, The Humpty Dumpty Foundation, and cricket tragic who recently returned from a holiday in the UK to watch the Test.

Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa - site of the Humpty Dumpty Foundation's Ultimate Burn (picture Mike Dowling 2008)

Right now 21 Australians are camped in sub-zero temperatures at 3950m above sea level on Mt Kilimanjaro in a bid to raise $2 million for a children’s charity.

Among the climbers are Paul Francis, the man who started the Humpty Dumpty Foundation in 1996, Federal Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey (who had the bright idea to climb Kili in the first place), 19-year-old Victorian Paralympian and world champion sprinter Kelly Cartwright, Channel 7’s Sunrise co-host, David Koch, paediatrician Jonny Taitz, and an assortment of businessmen, entrepreneurs, lawyers and financiers, one of whom took his wife.

It hasn’t been cheap: each climber had to raise $50,000 just to take part, and they are still raising money online as they climb up the highest free-standing peak in Africa. Since leaving for Africa last week, they’ve generated another $13,000 bringing the total so far to $1.328 million.

I’ve been speaking to Francis every day via satellite phone to get daily progress reports from the climb. The line is crackly and time-delayed but there is no doubting the excitement and energy in Francis’s voice. Or how tough the trek really is.

On Saturday, they climbed for six hours and ascended through the cloud line. Imagine that! “We are looking at the most amazing blue skies and the snow-scattered peak of Kili,” he told me yesterday before setting off on a nine-hour trek over several kilometres that put them at 3950m ASL. “I know I get a bit emotional at times, but honestly, this is beyond our expectations.”

Anyone who knows Francis knows he does get a bit emotional. He is not afraid to cry at Humpty’s annual charity events.

At the 2008 Balmoral Burn charity dinner, he was moved to tears by  country nurse, Helen Stevens, who talked about the tragic death of a three-year-old child because the hospital where she was admitted did not have a $3000 piece of equipment that would have saved her. What price life, right?

Paul Francis, founder of the Humpty Dumpty Foundation

Francis is an easy-going bloke who runs a tennis centre in north Sydney. For years, his members held a ball on the eve of the Wimbledon finals, and back in the early ’90s they decided to raise a bit of cash to help give the kids ward at the Royal North Shore Hospital a coat of paint. They raised $40,000 without even trying. The next year, they did it again, and raised more than $100,000.

From little things, big things grow. And it’s all about community involvement and local support.

In the past three years, Humpty has managed to raise more than $7 million most of which has been spent on buying vital life saving medical equipment for RNSH and other hospitals around New South Wales. Humpty also branched out to East Timor, where two clinics have been brought into the charity’s growing family. Net result: countless kids’ lives have been saved.

Here’s how it works: hospitals nominate an item that they need for the kids wards and give it to the Humpty medical committee which decides if it should be added to Humpty’s wish list. Things like stethoscopes don’t pass muster – governments should be buying them.

Once on the Wish List, the item will be bought by generous supporters at any of the three Humpty fund-raisers held each year – the ball (September 5), the Balmoral Burn sponsors’ dinner (last Friday of May each year), and the Good Egg thank you lunch.

The 2008 Balmoral Burn (the brain child of former rugby great and Wallaby legend, Phil Kearns) raised an unprecedented $2.2 million and this year 9000 people took part in the annual fun-run.

It’s a great system. Kids like Sophie Delezio, Andie Kearns (Phil’s daughter) and even Francis’s own children have benefited from Humpty-badged equipment. And you never know when you might need it, too.

Here’s the thing about Humpty’s Kili climb. All the trekkers have made huge sacrifices to be there. They’ve been in training for months and will be away from family, friends, personal and professional commitments for 12 days. Joe Hockey turned 44 on the mountain on Sunday and his wife is pregnant, but he is committed to the cause and, having dreamt up the Ultimate Burn as the climb has been dubbed, there was no way he wasn’t going to do it.

It is hard going. It’s cold. Actually, Francis says “it’s bloody freezing. Correction, below bloody freezing”. Kili is not for wimps, but the conditions won’t deter them.

The Good Eggs from the Kili Club are feeling bad while doing something goof for kids.

Help them if you can.