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Alex Prestney keeps a treasured photo of him and his late brother, Josh, standing in the MCG together and smiling after finishing a half-marathon in October 2017.
They were good mates, 18 months apart in age. Both loved long-distance running and had a friendly rivalry.
On a mission: Alex Prestney trains for his run from Mildura to Melbourne.Credit: Eddie Jim
Alex remembers nearly beating Josh that day, running up St Kilda Road towards the Arts Centre in Melbourne, a few kilometres from finishing the 21-kilometre run at the ’G.
“I made up a fair bit of ground, but I just couldn’t catch him,” Alex said.
They swapped a bit of ribbing and had a laugh afterwards.
Alex says he thinks of his brother every day. Josh never got to meet his own niece — Alex and partner Rachel’s nine-month-old daughter, Eliza.
Good mates: Josh, left, and Alex Prestney at the MCG after the 2017 Melbourne Marathon half-marathon.
“I sit and look at his photo for a while. Sometimes that can be very difficult, when that’s all you have.”
Josh, a constable, was one of the four Victoria Police officers killed on duty when drug-affected driver Mohinder Singh’s semi-trailer crashed into them on the Eastern Freeway in Kew East on April 22, 2020.
The police had pulled over Porsche driver Richard Pusey, who survived the crash, for alleged speeding.
Later this month, on July 31, Alex, who is a police senior constable, will set off on a 560-kilometre run from Mildura to Melbourne to raise funds and awareness for the charity Amber Community.
Josh Prestney, left, and brother Alex Prestney at Josh’s Victoria Police graduation.
The organisation provides free counselling and support to people impacted by road trauma and educates road users about attitudes and behaviours.
Alex’s Run For Road Trauma takes in towns such as Ouyen, Charlton, Bendigo, and Kyneton and will finish at the Police Memorial on St Kilda Road in Melbourne on August 24.
Alex’s parents, Belinda and Andrew, will sometimes join him on the run, and his wife will be in the support crew.
The run follows the release of new figures showing that in the calendar year so far to June 29, Victoria’s road toll was 154 – 30.5 per cent up on the same period last year, when it was 118.
Alex Prestney with daughter Eliza and mother Belinda Prestney.Credit: Eddie Jim
Last week, a 15-year-old passenger in a car being driven by a 14-year-old died when the car collided with a truck in Locksley in northern Victoria.
Alex, 30, chose Mildura to start the run because it was near where Senior Constable Bria Joyce died on April 9, 2022, when a ute allegedly veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with her unmarked police car.
Alex returned to work last December, after more than two years of leave, to the highway patrol division — he now works in Knox, an area covering the EastLink tollway, which connects to the Eastern Freeway — because he believes he can make a difference.
And he has a new sense of perspective.
He has since attended accidents where he’s spoken to drivers about having experienced road trauma. He says a bad decision can not only mean a car is wrecked, but it can also easily result in the deaths of them or other people.
“I say, ‘If you are killed, so many people are left with this mess. This preventable mess, to have to pick up the pieces with, and it’s so hard to do that after a loss’,” Alex says.
He says the road toll shouldn’t be accepted as inevitable. The community should work together to find a solution.
“[L]et’s talk about that, let’s open that up. These aren’t just ‘things that happen’, they’re actions from human decisions and behaviours.”
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