Richard Scolyer

Hi, Sarah.

Lovely to chat to you.

Absolutely shocked that we won the award.

It was a great week, actually, being in Canberra and meeting other state winners of the Australian of the Year Awards.

And they're incredible people who have achieved amazing things and helped the community in very, very admirable ways.

So it was a fun week.

And to be honest...

I thought all of them were deserving to be winners and we certainly didn't expect to win.

In fact, we were pretty terrible about preparing our speech.

Well, just the afternoon of the presentation.

We did it twice and on the third time said, we're not going to win it.

Let's forget it.

Yeah.

But anyway, yeah, it was obviously a great thrill.

But also for us, we might be the heads of Melanoma Institute Australia, but the truth is it's an amazing team of people that have worked together as a team to really achieve some tremendous things that have helped patients in melanoma especially, but in many other cancers too.

They range from everything.

In fact, the kids, my kids have seen some of the photos and there's one, it's a little embarrassing, but there's one, apparently when I went to the toilet, I'd sit the wrong way around.

So I was facing the toilet.

So they're asking me, are you going to put that one in your book?

Mum and dad were very much into the incredible wilderness areas in Tasmania and took us on many walks through different national parks.