Sport
16 January, 2026
Locals Shane McCallum and Neale Luscombe complete 2026 Lorne Pier to Pub
Local duo Shane McCallum and Neale Luscombe recently overcame personal hardships with astounding determination and mateship to complete the famous Lorne Pier to Pub.
Ever since they met, McCallum and Luscombe have shared a passion for swimming and wanting to challenge themselves.
After participating in the Starlight Super Swim for several years, a month-long challenge that raises money for children in hospitals, McCallum was looking for a new swimming goal.
McCallum quickly set his sights on the iconic Lorne Pier to Pub, a 1.2 kilometre race from the local pier to the Surf Life Saving Club that attracts over 5000 swimmers.
“I was like I wouldn’t mind doing the Pier to Pub and Neale was like, I reckon that would be alright if I can build up to it, so for the past 12 months we have been training once a week for it,” McCallum said.
For Luscombe, competing in one of the largest ocean swims in the world would bring more obstacles than just fighting through unpredictable conditions amidst a crowded pack of people.
Luscombe was diagnosed with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis in 2007, which continues to worsen his neurological function.
As the condition quickly progressed to Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (SMMS), Luscombe was forced to stop working in 2013 due to mobility and cognitive issues and often uses a mobility scooter when out of the house.
One of the main challenges for Luscombe was being unable to use his Pull Buoy during the race, forcing him to create floats on his quads as a solution.
“I don’t even think about it now, because SMMS is a progressive disease, new things come up and you just have to deal with them as they come up and find a way to make them work,” Luscombe said.
“Before SMMS, I thought about doing the Pier to Pub as a swimmer, but it never came about. This time, I really had the motivation to do it.
“My challenge was to work out if I could do it disabled and the logistics of it, like getting into the water, getting down the ramp to get into the water, because I knew once in the water I could do the swim and then getting out at the end was going to be another problem.”
Despite Luscombe’s SMMS and the fact that neither of them had participated in an ocean race before, the duo were determined to put their year of hard training into action last Saturday, even with numerous shark sightings a week before the event.
That was until bushfires began to spread all across Victoria, with Friday’s catastrophic fire conditions immediately putting communities at risk.
McCallum, a volunteer firefighter with the CFA, was quickly called to assist, spending over 14 hours battling the bushfires the day before the race.
“When I knew Harcourt had started that day, and even without Harcourt, there was the Longwood fire which is still going now, I was like if that’s happening, I’m going to the fires,” McCallum said.
“Luckily, I had all my gear in the car before we went and had it all ready to go, so my wife and the kids picked me up from the fire station and took off to Lorne. We got diverted around Skipton and literally got there five minutes before we hit the water.”
Immediately after McCallum reached the starting point in the nick of time, the pair plunged themselves into the freezing Lorne waves, where they quickly lost each other amongst the sea of people.
Halfway through the race, McCallum spotted Luscombe struggling in the swell, forced to grab him by the leg to get his attention.
“I was really finding it tough to swim and I didn’t know where Shane was after the start. I was honestly looking at the surf skis to possibly pull out of the race because I thought I was doing it too hard and was struggling a bit in the currents,” Luscombe said.
“You would be swimming and you would think you are swimming straight and then all of a sudden you are taken sideways.
“When I bumped into Shane, that gave me enough energy to finish the race. I felt supported then, I didn’t feel like I was just in the middle of the ocean.”
With the duo reunited, they sprinted to the finish line, smashing both their expectations out of the water to complete the race in a time of 32.33.
“I was so happy that we made it and Shane was saying to me with his arm around me, getting out of the water going, we did it, we did it,” Luscombe said.
“When you finish the event, it’s kind of a situation of what do we do now, so now we are looking for another goal.”
McCallum has found his new goal in participating in this February’s Starlight Super Swim, aiming to swim 73 km in 28 days.
“I thought if I could hit the fireground for 14 hours with no sleep and complete that race in one piece, I could probably do 73 km in 28 days,” McCallum said.