How a desperate phone snoop saved a life – and reset Stefan and Lachlan Lamble’s relationship

Detailed summary

Two brothers, one mission: to run 3400 kilometres across Australia – and record every painful step.

Brothers Stefan, 27, and Lachlan Lamble, 25, are known by their 4 million social-media fans as “the Lambros”. In 2024, they ran from Perth to Melbourne, 3400 kilometres in 85 days, to raise money for cancer research.

LACHLAN: As a kid, Stef was extremely shy and introverted, the opposite of what he is now. I put it down to the bullying he experienced in kindergarten, but he also suffered some pretty tough love at home in Dingley Village [in Melbourne]. Our father would make us do these one-on-one AFL contests and there were no rules. Stef trained so hard that he broke a metatarsal in his foot, a fracture that would come back to haunt us.

In 2022, Stef went through a relationship break-up. He’d been with his girl for five years, and he thought he’d be with her forever, but she broke up with him suddenly and he didn’t sleep or eat for two days. Then, the following Saturday, he snapped his ACL, MCL and meniscus in an AFL game and had to have surgery. The pain meds gave him severe gastritis. He fell into a massive depression and barely left his room for six weeks.

One morning, he rushed out of the house, leaving his phone on the couch. I quickly grabbed it – our faces can open each other’s phones – and found a video he’d made, saying he wanted to end it all; he didn’t have much to live for. I bolted out of the house, barefoot, to look for him. When I found him ’round the block, I gave him a big cuddle and said, “Stef, I f---in’ love you so much. It’s you and me against the world.”

We came straight home and booked him in for 10 sessions with a psychologist. We began a 75-day mental toughness and discipline program and decided to record our progress on social media to keep ourselves accountable. We ended up with about 14,000 followers.

In 2024, I was studying to become a physiotherapist when our grandmother died of cancer. Suddenly feeling in need of a change of direction, I said to Stef, “Why don’t we raise a heap of money for cancer research by running across Australia and…

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Opening of the article, excerpted from Brisbane Times. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.