Aussie charity founder to run 1400km in memory of the Boxing Day tsunami

As a forensic investigations expert, Peter Baines has spent his career running towards disaster and tragedy – whether it be a grisly crime scene or an international disaster.

But it was Baines’ deployment to Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 that would go on to change the course of his life forever.

“I often say that the only thing that remained the same in my life from that moment on was that I had three kids, because in the ensuing time, my marriage would break down and everything else in my life changed,” Baines said.

With a team of Australian police officers, including from the Australian Federal Police and NSW Police, Baines helped lead the identification efforts of Thai locals and tourists who perished in the unprecedented disaster.

This December will mark 20 years since the Boxing Day tsunami, which claimed the lives of about 230,000 people worldwide, and 5400 in Thailand.

“Being exposed to death and loss and destruction, that was the nature of my work,” Baines said.

Baines threw himself into the critical and monumental task. He soon found his interactions with the relatives of those who had died were among the most difficult but rewarding.

There was one particular meeting with a group of orphans that would remain in the minds of Baines and his colleagues long after they left.

“We visited the kids that would come for support who were living in a tent within a temple in that region.

“They had all lost their families.”

After his return to Australia, Baines was speaking with a colleague in the UK who brought up the kids they had met in the tent.

“She said, those kids need a home. Do you want to help build them at home?” Baines said.

“And I said, ‘Yeah, okay.'”

Those simple words led to the formation of the Hands Across the Water charity.

Over the course of two decades, the registered charity has gone on to raise $30 million for social welfare projects in Thailand.

In addition to building a home for the original orphans Baines met, the charity has supported thousands of other children over seven locations in Thailand.

Many of the children living in the tent have now graduated from university, with Hands Across the Water providing scholarships.

While the charity gained momentum from the start, Baines – who has since written books and was awarded an Order of Australia medal for his efforts – said he initially wasn’t so confident of its success.

“I had no idea how I was going to raise the money. And it was at that time that I was probably close to the lowest point in my life,” he said.

“I had separated from my wife as a result of all the deployments and all the things around it. Financially, physically, mentally – I was exhausted and pretty broken.

“When you look at doing something for someone else, normally it’s when you’re in a good position.

“Well, I was in the worst position, but by doing something for someone else, that put me in what would transform into being the best place in my life.”

Baines began working on the public speaking circuit, using the fees he received and contacts he made to build the charity up.

These days, a major source of fundraising for the charity is the regular bike rides they run with Australian participants in Thailand.

With the 20th anniversary of the tsunami approaching, Baines said he wanted to mark the occasion with an even bigger challenge.

“There’s obviously a personal journey with the 20 years and what it’s meant for me,” Baines said.

“There’s been some incredible highs but there’s also been some pretty desperate lows and I wanted to do something personal to kind of tie a bow around 20 years.

“And I thought, what about a run?”

Slowly, the “crazy” idea began to take shape.

Starting on December 1, Baines will run almost the entire length of Thailand – 1400 kilometres – over the course of 26 days.

It will be the equivalent of running 33 marathons, or from Melbourne to Brisbane.

The run will begin at the charity’s HIV home in the north-east of Thailand and end at the tsunami memorial in the south on December 26.

Although Baines is no stranger to running marathons, or even ultra-marathons, he said this would be his biggest physical challenge by far.

“I’ve run from Canberra to Sydney, that was 50km a day,” he said.

“But Thailand has the heat and it’s not an insignificant thing.”

Baines hopes his epic journey, dubbed the “Run to Remember”, will help raise the profile of the charity locally in Thailand – almost all of its funds still come from Australia.

But the run also has an ambitious fundraising goal in itself of $1 million, with the charity now looking for potential sponsors.

The money raised will go towards Hands Across the Water’s education centres, which the charity had been almost ready to launch when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The initiative includes a hospitality training centre in the southern tourist hotspot, Khao Lak.

The centre will train students to meet the direct employment needs of the major hotels in the region, rather than focussing on qualifications.