Channel Ten news presenter Candice Wyatt's fundraising trek to Nepal is a tribute to her mother

When journalist Candice Wyatt and her mother Karyn started talking about going to Nepal together, it was a natural fit for the adventurous and athletic Karyn: she had trekked Kokoda twice and had her sights set on marathon training.

Wyatt, now a senior reporter and newsreader at 10 News First, agreed they would together fulfil one of her mother’s wishes – trekking to Everest base camp.

However, before she and Wyatt could make plans for the trip, Karyn started experiencing vertigo. It came with a dire diagnosis: the mother of two had brain cancer, which to date has no cure.

Now, six years after Karyn’s death at age 56, Wyatt will embark on the journey they had planned, honouring her mother and with a vital purpose.

In February next year, she is joining a trek of the Annapurna Circuit in the Nepalese Himalayas to raise money towards treatments for brain cancer. Wyatt has been pushing herself through regular altitude training at a gym this year to handle the extreme conditions.

Her fundraising endeavours – the goal is tens of thousands – go hand-in hand with her role as an ambassador for Cure Brain Cancer, the foundation behind the trek.

She is also auctioning off a private all-inclusive dinner in Room 1954 for 26 people at the Pullman Melbourne on Swanston, where she will wait on diners (bids can be made by direct messaging Wyatt through her Instagram account).

Contributing to the cause will be the sales of a limited edition candle she has developed – The Scent of Nepal – invoking the fragrances her mother loved; patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla and cinnamon.

Wyatt remembers that when her mother first became ill, she was naive to the insidious nature of brain cancer. “Survival rates for brain cancer have not changed in decades,” she says.

“It’s still a great unknown. Brain cancer kills more children and more adults under 40 in Australia than any other disease. We thought she would have an operation and everything would be fine.”

Karyn was told to expect numbness in her left arm and leg. Instead, her mother woke up from surgery “and [those limbs] were completely paralysed. She never walked again. That made her entire hospital stay and death even worse. She always talked about running again. She’d say, ‘I can’t wait until I can go back home and go for a run.’

“I always say, with zero exaggeration, that my mum was the fittest person I’ve ever known. My earliest memories are of her teaching aerobics classes. She watched everything she ate … people need to know that you can be perfectly healthy. Brain cancer is not linked to smoking or a bad diet or even genetics. It’s completely random.”

The disease caused painful shifts in the final stages.

“She had personality changes, she became aggressive [from the brain cancer] and the drugs she had to take changed everything about her appetite and appearance,” Wyatt says of her mother. “You don’t get the deep and meaningful conversations.”

Wyatt has no doubt Karyn would be proud of her achievements.

“I feel like a lot has happened since Mum died,” she says.

“I became a newsreader at Channel Ten. I bought my first property, had meaningful relationships, met some of my best friends.

“But this – going to Nepal to raise money – would be by far her proudest thing.”

Donations \ curebraincancer.org.au/Candice

The Scent of Nepal \ soyonthehill.com

Instagram @candice_wyatt_10