With nine spare pairs of sneakers in her support van, Mrs Bowman left Geelong on Monday and spent Sunday resting in Warrnambool before setting out again on Monday from the police station.

She said she will never know why her husband Anthony, a former Camperdown and Hamilton police officer, took his own life.

"Why? I'll never know," she said.

"There is no rhyme or reason.

"He left no note.

"At the end of the day, we've got no idea. That's the mess that suicide leaves behind. Unanswered questions that will never be answered because he's the only one with the answers."

She said her husband showed no signs of depression or post traumatic stress disorder. He was 58 and fit and healthy.

"I'd known him 28 years. That night we went to bed, he was exactly the same as he had been for 28 years. We played table tennis, we had the kids over for dinner. Everything was exactly the same," she said.

During the night he got up and took his own life.

Mrs Bowman said he would often say that the worst part of his job as a police officer was going to a suicide because he never knew what to say to the families.

"So at no point would I have ever, ever, ever, thought that this was an option for him," she said.

Last Monday she started her 63-day walk on the anniversary of her husband's death because she wanted "something good to remember on that day as well as the horrible".

Mrs Bowman's Those Left Behind campaign aims to raise $1 million for the police welfare unit to help combat their mental health issues. So far she has raised in excess of $50,000.

The trek will take her through Ballarat, Colac and Camperdown through Warrnambool to Portland before heading to Mildura and across the state to Bairnsdale and back to Geelong.

Mrs Bowman had known her husband for 28 years. He used to stop in for coffee at the Koala Motel, which she used to own, when he worked at Camperdown police station and would have to travel to Colac.

The couple were together for nine years and were married almost seven when he died.

Together they have four children, two are hers and two are his from his first marriage. He had six grandchildren, one was born 10 days before he took his own life and the other two have been born since then.

Mrs Bowman said she "was a bit of a mess" for the first few months after her husband died.

She knew she had to do something about it and make a change, so she started exercising. 

"I've lost 36 kilos to do this. Three days a week at PT and two at Pilates. The last four months I've been walking 30 km a day," she said.

"It's been a very hard slog to get to this point because I had to lose the weight. Eight months ago I wouldn't have been able to do this.

"I'm down to 42 kilos now. I'm only four foot 11, so that's not underweight."

Mrs Bowman said that the walk was her way of trying to make something good come out of it all, in a way to give his death a reason.

She said she had received huge support from Victoria police since she hit the road.

"I get a police escort everywhere I go. I've got one or more police officers walking with me all the time," she said.

"They're talking along the way, I'm talking along the way, which is helping everyone.

"It's fresh in their mind. They've got such a high rate of suicide in the police force.

"We need to change that."

She said she had also found support from others along the way including Direct Chemist in Warrnambool, who gave her the feet products she was going to purchase free of charge because they had heard her story on the radio.

To donate visit thoseleftbehind.org.au.

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