This mob are taking on Mt Everest. Their trek will raise thousands for mental health research

Joshua Creamer is leading a group of friends to the famous Mt Everest base camp in honour of his late brother, and to raise funds for the Black Dog Institute.

Joshua Creamer is heading back to take on Mt Everest again, but this time with a group of friends to raise money for a worthy cause. Source: Supplied / Joshua Creamer

WARNING: This article discusses themes of depression and suicide.

In April last year, Waanyi and Kalkadoon lawyer Joshua Creamer decided to climb Mt Everest - that was a Monday.

By Friday the same week, he was on a plane and on his way there.

After losing his brother to suicide just months earlier, Creamer said he "wanted to do something big."

"That really knocked me around," said Creamer.

"I decided I needed something really big to go and do. While I was there I thought, 'I would've loved to have done it with my brother.'"

Return to base

Less than a year later, he's planning to do it again.

This time, Creamer is taking on the monumental trek alongside a group of friends, in honour of his late brother and to raise funds for the First Nations Lived Experience Centre at the Black Dog Institute.

The centre is a network of members who all have experience of suicide within their communities, and its goal is to advocate for them to have a say in the policies and affairs that impact them.

Among those joining Creamer on the trek is Dr Clinton Schultz, Head of First Nations Research at Black Dog.

Members of the First Nations Lived Experience Centre at the Black Dog Institute. Source: Supplied / The Black Dog Institute

Approached by Creamer about joining him, Dr Schultz, a Gomeroi man, said it was an opportunity to make some noise about an important cause.

"Given why he went [to Mt Everest] in the first place, we thought what better cause to direct it to than ... Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention?" said Schultz.

Creamer says everyone on the team heading to Everest has had a connection to grief, trauma and suicide.

"People wanted to go to support each other and to achieve something really big like walking to Mt Everest," said Creamer.

"It's not every day a group of Blackfullas from Queensland and New South Wales get together to go and conquer something like that."

As well as being a physical feat to climb the highest mountain in the world, it is also a mental challenge.

"I think it is actually a bigger mental challenge than physical," said Creamer.

"And certainly where I was last year, dealing with the grief and loss of my brother, it actually brought out a lot of those characteristics which have served me well mentally - the resilience, the determination, the focus.

"It really shifted my mental state from when I left to when I came back."

Reflecting on his first journey, Creamer said he realised what his mental strength could get him through and is looking forward to sharing that with the team.

"It's that challenge of getting up every day in really harsh conditions," he said.

"You've got a small pack, you're freezing most of the time, particularly at night, and it's a third world country so food is limited.

"But you realise you don't need a lot in life to achieve these things and a lot of it is [mental], or in your ticker, and that's what that journey showed me last year.

"All of us will go through that same level of discomfort and challenge as a team and hopefully we'll come out of it stronger and more united."

The group are hoping to raise $50,000 for the centre, which Dr Schultz says can go a long way to helping more mob.

"We know that mental health support isn't readily available in the majority of our communities. The best thing that we do have available in all of our communities is that peer to peer support," he said.

"The more that we can help people to feel comfortable in yarning up when they're in crisis, yarning to each other about what does and doesn't work gives us all learning opportunities."

Last year Creamer carried the Aboriginal flag, and this year the team has plans to represent their culture again.

"Jeremy [Donovan] is going to carry the didg. He wants to be ... the first Aboriginal man to play the didg when we get to base camp," said Creamer.

Schultz is wary of the gesture.

"Look, I'm just hoping they don't cause an avalanche with that yidaki when we get up there to be honest," he says with a laugh.

The team has raised over $34,000 so far and sets off on their adventure in March.