Skin Cancer Campaign Honours The Life Of Clovelly Local

By Isaac Levido on February 16, 2011 in News

Habitual readers of The Beast may recall the story of the late Wes Bonny. A great friend to this magazine and many others in the area, Wes tragically passed away in March last year after an ongoing and aggressive battle with melanoma. More recently, some of you may also have seen a new Cancer Institute of NSW television campaign featuring Wes’s family and friends talking about the terrible disease that took him from us. Using a combination of spots (linked below), the ads have been featuring heavily across New South Wales, particularly during recent coverage of the cricket and tennis.

The ads are confronting, and so they should be. What happened to Wes is a wake-up call to us all. Wes was not a ‘tanner’; he had fair skin so couldn’t afford to be out in the sun long, or unprotected. While we all have lapses from time-to-time, Wes very rarely got burnt and after his initial diagnosis was especially cautious. Nonetheless, Wes still developed what one oncologist described as the most aggressive melanoma he’d ever seen. Now that Wes is gone, these ads serve as a sobering reminder that skin cancer doesn’t discriminate.

The Beast (and this author) is very proud to have played a small part in this campaign – Wes’s story came to the attention of the Cancer Institute after an obituary was printed in last May’s edition. But, first and foremost, we have those closest to Wes to thank for participating in what was an incredibly painful undertaking. It’s a very difficult, but amazingly generous, gesture by the Bonny family to allow Wes to be the face of this new campaign. He is sorely missed by so many and we hope these ads are able to do justice to Wes’s legacy by spreading the awareness of melanoma’s lethal potential, and hopefully prevent another tragedy for someone else’s family and friends.

Check out the ads below and be sure to use your common sense before venturing out into the sun: