Welcome to the Good News Roundup for September 22, 2025
West Australian Woman Sets Record for Running Around Australia
A WA woman has become the youngest and fastest woman to run around Australia, completing the extraordinary feat in 204 days.
Brooke McIntosh ran more than 14,000km to raise funds for mental health charity The Blue Tree Project, completing the run yesterday, Sunday September 21.
Brooke decided to embark on the challenge as a way of transforming her own story of trauma and adversity into the power of resilience.
Read more in The West Australian here.
Chicago River Welcomes Swimmers for the First Time in Almost a Century
Swimmers have taken to the Chicago River for the first time in almost 100 years, following mammoth efforts to clean up toxic pollution from the waterway.
In the past, sewage, animal carcasses and other waste was routinely dumped into the river, creating a heavily polluted waterway that caused deadly outbreaks of disease.
The Friends of Chicago River group formed in 1979 with a vision to restore the river, and over decades have transformed the water to allow wildlife to return, and finally, for it to be safe enough to swim in again.
You can read more about the river restoration and the swim, here.
Tasmanian Farmers Rally to Save Local Post Office
Often considered the life blood of communities, residents in a tiny town in Tasmania have come together to save their local post office, amid fears it would be shut down after the previous operator moved on.
Also acting as a bank, the post office was a vital part of the town of Fingal, and its potential closure triggered a rally of hundreds, despite the local population only officially a little more than 400 people.
It prompted local farmers Maria and Michael Kinzie, and Maria’s son William Russell to put up their hands to take on the job, despite no previous experience, with the post office now also stocking local farm produce to help make it commercially viable.
Read the full story on the ABC.
Woman Wins Lotto – Immediately Gifts it all to Charity
And we finish this week’s wrap up with this heartwarming story of giving back – a woman in the US won $150,000 on a lotto ticket, and immediately donated all the winnings to charity.
Carrie Edwards split her winnings into three, $50,000 donations, gifting the money to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, Shalom Farms and the Navy-Marine Relief Society.
As you’ll read here, the donation to the AFTD was particularly personal, having lost her husband to early-onset dementia.
