Man Walks 5,600 Miles across Australia in Stormtrooper Armor

Now this is obviously a good idea. But Scott Loxley is doing more than being cool by dressing as a stormtrooper from Star Wars. He's a member of the 501st Legion, a charitable organization operated by Imperial stormtroopers. Loxley plans to walk around the entire coast of Australia--that's almost 10,000 miles--to raise money for a children's hospital.

So far, Loxley, 47, has traveled about 5,600 miles in a year and a half. He hopes to finish his journey by July of next year. He has raised about $19,000 (USD) for Monash Children's Hospital in Melbourne, which will open in 2016. Loxley hopes to get as much as $87,000 (USD) by the end of the project.

It's hard journey, but Loxley is committed to it. Jenni Ryall writes for Stuff:

He has gone through more than 20 pairs of shoes, eaten roadkill and slept in a swag by the side of the road. […]

It is an amazing story of survival in the harsh Australian outback, where he says his own company is the enemy but to get through he thinks of the children he can help. "You are fighting a mostly mental battle. Some days you wake up and don't want to get up, and you think why I am doing this," he said. "Before I started I went and visited the kids quite a lot of times, I dwell on that a lot and think of those kids on my bad days. Their bad days are worse than this."

-via Dave Barry | Images: Storming Australia