Interviews

Published on January 28th, 2015 | by Admin

Scott Loxley Interview (Storming Australia)

Impulse Gamer caught up with Scott Loxley last night, a real Australian hero who is walking around Australia as a Storm Trooper from Star Wars in order to raise $100,000 for the new Monash Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Scott began his journey in late 2013 and has so far walked 12,000 kilometres with this 501^st Legion member returning to Melbourne on June the 14^th of this year.

Hey Scott, Welcome to Impulse Gamer, congrats on your amazing adventure and how was your day?

Thanks mate. You know… we’re getting there!

So how many kilometres have you left?

It’s roughly around 3,000 kilometres left now and I’m finishing in Melbourne on June the 14^th.

You’ve been away from home for a while now, how’s your family handling it?

It’s been 18 months mate which is a very long time. My wife Sally misses me and I miss her. You know, I just want to be there now. I just want to see her and that’s the hardest part of the whole trip, the absence of her in my life. I really miss her and just want to go home. I’m almost there though!

So what inspired you to walk for the Monash Children’s Hospital?

I’ve always wanted to walk around Australia to see if I could do it and from there, I went to organise it. Then I realised that I could throw a charity at it which is a really good cause and I could also include the 501st Legion which is a group I volunteer with who raise money for charities in Australia and around the world. We thought we could raise a bit of money for the Monash Children’s Hospital and also raise awareness for what the 501st Legion do as well. So it’s a really good thing.

So what made you dress as a Storm Trooper from Star Wars?

The Storm Trooper is iconic and everyone knows what the Storm Trooper looks like from the Star Wars films and no matter where I go, people know who he is. You know, you get the occasional Darth Vader but the Storm Trooper is a great advertising device and being a 501st member, we dress in Storm Trooper costumes all the time to raise money for various charities so he was just an easy one to go for.

I’m guessing you’ve been a huge Star Wars fan for a while now?

Yeah, my parents took me to see Star Wars at the drive in back in ‘77 when it first came out and even then it was an amazing movie because we’ve never seen anything like that before. So that always stuck with me.

Can you tell us what the Storm Trooper costume is made from?

It’s an ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic which is pretty lightweight but I’ve had to modify it like inlay the sides with fibreglass and inlay the abdomen and chest with fibreglass to make it more robust so it would last the actual trip and distance. So it’s a little bit heavier than normal.

So how’s it looking now since you’ve started the trip? Any damage or issues?

It’s sustained a lot of damage and the ABS gets brittle and cracks. It’s mainly covered in tape now to try and hold it together and all sorts of stuff. I’m determined to finish the walk in same set of armour that I started with.

In Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo makes an amusing comment about a Tauntaun… “I thought they smelt bad on the outside”, how’s your amour smelling now?

<laugh> Mate, it smells bad on the outside and smells bad in the inside. I mean all you’re doing is just walking and sweating in it every day, especially at the moment with the high humidity and the sun beating down on you so you’ve got no relief. So you’ve walked the first 15 minutes of the day and you’re already soaking and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Storm Trooper 1, King Brown 0, so what exactly happened during this encounter?

<laugh> As you walk along, you pretty much see snakes all the time in that part of the country as that’s what they do. So I’m walking along and I see another dead snake on the ground or what I think is a dead snake. It turns out to be a King Brown snake and as I walked up to it, I guess I must have startled it as all I saw was its head rear and then I realised it wasn’t dead.

Then I saw him strike and it bit me on the back of my calf muscle which is just great and I thought I was gone. I look down and I’m waiting for the whole sensation of the bite to take affect which it didn’t and that’s when I realised that its teeth did not penetrate the plastic which I was pretty happy about. He sort of took off in his own way and I carried on feeling pretty happy.

Wow, that’s pretty amazing Scott.

Yeah, it was just luck.

So what does your wife think when you have incidents like this on your journey?

She’s pretty good because she understands that things like this could happen and she trusts me to make the right decision and if something did happen, I’d be calling the right people or administrating the correct first aid to myself. But I get a lot of information from her as she’s also a RN (Registered Nurse), so it’s like I’ve got a nurse on-call 24×7 which is great.

What’s the next the next town you’re about to visit?

I’m heading down to Rockhampton and I should be there in a couple of days

Do you have little breaks on the way or do you keep on soldering through?

It depends on what I’ve gone through but most days, I walk 7 days a week because there’s no point having a day off if I’m going to just sit by the side of the road so I may as well keep moving which I generally do.

You’re a former soldier and correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve heard that you cook all sorts of things up from lizards to road kill and even do the odd spot of fishing. So how do you cook up these delicacies?

Yeah that’s true. You basically get a fire going and burn it down to the coals and I’ve got a little grill that I put over it and then lay the stuff over the top and cook it.

So what’s the tastiest meal you’ve cooked so far?

I don’t know, it’s all starting to taste the same now. With the meat, you need to get all the blood out of it, especially the stuff I get it. I really have to cook it well on one side to get the blood to the top and then I squeeze the meat to get as much blood out of it as I can. I then turn it over and cook the other side which is the best I can kind of do. But all meats kind of taste the same as I char it as much as I can.

When you get back home, what’s the first meal?

The first meal I’m going to have when I get back is whatever Sally cooks for me.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen so far?

I’ve seen lots of people doing random things. I was walking through Western Australia and being in the middle of nowhere, one hundred kilometres from anywhere and I saw a guy walking out from nowhere. He had football shorts on, no shirt and he just said g’day and kept walking. I don’t understand where he came from or where he was going too. He just spoke to me like it was something he done every day, it was really bizarre.

Another bloke who was riding his bike around the world for the last 19-years of his life. Then there’s this Australian guy who just wants to ride his bike for the rest of his life and going nowhere in particular, he just rides… there’s people out there on the fringes just doing incredible stuff.

Have you had any hair raising moment with other people?

People have been really good to me and I haven’t had a bad incident yet. People have been really receptive to what I’m doing and they come up to me and ask me what I’m doing. I explain it to them and they go, that’s awesome and they donate in the end so I’ve had a really good response from pretty much everybody I’ve met so far.

So in your adventures, have you heard anything from Lucasfilm or Disney?

I do a lot of stuff with 501st Legion when we do events for Lucasfilm and Disney. I know that Disney are happy with what I’m doing so far and it’s going down a real treat. I’m at the point when they’re having a Moomba day parade in Melbourne and Disney are sponsoring me in that. They’re going to be promoting Storming Australia and what I do which is really positive and really good.

So how much have you raised so far?

My total that I want to raise is $100,000 and at the moment I’m at the $50,000 mark. So by the time I head down the east coast, I should quite easily make that money for the Monash Children’s Hospital.

Where can people learn more about your walk?

If people go onto Facebook, they can either type my name Scott Loxley or Storming Australia. From there, they can jump onto the links to the everyday hero page and it will show them everything they need to know.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000060171971

https://www.facebook.com/StormingAustralia

https://newmonashchildrenshospital.everydayhero.com/au/stormingaroundaustralia

Thanks for your time tonight Scott and well done on such an amazing journey!

Thanks mate!