This month, former English soccer international Fran Hurndall (right), 32, is running from Perth to Sydney to raise money for domestic violence victims. Her partner in “logistics” and love, police officer Natalie Gidas, 39, will be by her side.

Fran: I met Nat online, in December 2022, on the Gold Coast; I’d just moved there from Sydney. Our first date was at a Chinese-Japanese restaurant in Mermaid Beach. She was 15 minutes late; she’d come from work. I knew she was a forensic police officer, which I found fascinating, so the whole conversation, virtually, was about her job. I asked about her worst case, and she said it was a woman who’d been set alight by her husband. I found it so honourable that Nat was putting herself on the line like that every day. I also thought she was beautiful. Even though her heritage is Greek, she has these lovely blue eyes you get lost in.

We started seeing each other. I was renting at the time but, after four weeks, I was spending so much time with Nat that I moved in with her. It had its challenges. For instance, we both have dogs. Mine’s a dachshund called Seven, which was my football-jersey number. She has a dalmatian called Pirate.

At the beginning, Pirate would sleep on her bed and the couch. I’m a bit OCD and it made me feel so unclean. I said to Nat, “I can’t deal with the dog hair,” so she agreed to stop letting Pirate get on the couch and bed. There was also Nat’s eating. She chews quite loudly and, at the beginning of the relationship, she’d chew with her mouth open. I was like, “Do you know that it’s rude to eat with your mouth open?” And she said, “Oh, no one ever told me that.”

‘I realised then that she chose love over being right, whereas, in the past, I’d chosen being right over love.’

Fran Hurndall

At the time, I thought, “The chewing, the dog hair – how does someone get through life like that?” I was judging her. Then I realised that Nat wasn’t judging me. She was like, “How do we resolve this?” I realised then that she chose love over being right, whereas, in the past, I’d chosen being right over love.

At the time, I was working remotely for Transport NSW. But then, a week before Christmas 2023, I was made redundant, which was very stressful. I’d be at the shops and I’d call her and say, “I don’t have enough money for groceries” and she’d calm me down. It went on for three months. Sometimes I struggled to get out of bed. She’d come home from work and see me crying and jump into bed and hug me and say, “It’s OK; I’ve got you, babe.”

It was then that I got the idea to dribble a soccer ball from the Gold Coast to Sydney, which raised $20,000 for women’s sport. After that, I thought, “What’ll I do next?” So I decided to run from Perth to Sydney in less than 40 days to raise money for domestic violence, which has affected my sister. As a police officer, Nat has seen lots of DV, so it means a lot to her, too.

We’ve thrown caution to the wind and taken out a loan to pay for everything, but Nat has never wavered. She says: “You’re going to change the world, babe.” She sees more potential in me than I see in myself. We have a saying, “As long as we’re both in the boat and willing to row, then that’s all we’ll ever need.”