ManUp! Leading the way teaching rural mean about prostate cancer

They spend over 10 months of the year on the road travelling to regional and rural communities to spread awareness and run educational programs via their charity ManUp!

When Queensland Country Life met up with the pair they were volunteering at the Ekka for a fellow charity Toowoomba Hospital Foundation helping to fund health equipment, services, and programs in rural and regional communities.

"You either sit and feel sorry for yourself, and I do plenty of that too, or you can get up and go - well I can actually do some good from this," Jill said when asked about how she turned her grief into purpose.

ManUp! is run exclusively by the mother and daughter, who hail from Brisbane, and aims at encouraging men to get prostate checks as early detection can save lives.

Jill said the drive to focus on rural men came from wanting to create better outcomes in places where education and services were limited as men in these areas had a 27 per cent higher chance of dying from prostate cancer than those living in major cities.

"Men in the bush have poorer outcomes and a higher mortality rate and really men shouldn't be dying because of where they live," said Jill.

"They should have all the advantages that we in Brisbane have and they simply don't. So we thought if we were going to make a difference, we were going to have go into the bush and educate men there.

"We are always pushing for more for the bush, our charity is a very little charity with very small funding and so we focus on what we can do and so we educate."

The pair hold information and education programs at mine sites, or organise sessions through regional and remote councils.

"I would have laughed if you'd told me I would be sitting on a mine site talking to men about prostate cancer," said Jill.

Jill has a background in psychology and used to be a special needs teacher before becoming a consultant and Leah has a background in charity work.

Jill said she never pictured herself working and travelling full-time with her daughter but she said they get on really well together.

Jill said while education was the charity's main purpose, she wanted to take the opportunity to advocate for better services in the bush.

"If we get in and educate men, hopefully we'll catch them early instead of late and they won't need so much in the way of services, but we would like to see far more services in the bush."