Hitchhiking with a fridge - to get men talking

Rob Cope reckons men don't talk enough about the real issues, so he and his fridge Steve are hitchhiking around the country in an attempt to get men having conversations.

"I'm out here having all this fun with Steve, but if I was having a real conversation with Steve, he'd probably be about as helpful as a normal guy would."

Mr Cope, a builder from Wellington, is fundraising for Project Wildman, which focuses on getting men to talk about the issues they face "rather than bottling it up and wondering why we drink, get depressed and have a record suicide rate".

"So many of us guys go through s*** in our lives and when we do, we've got no mates to talk to because no-one knows how to talk.

"You sit in the the pub with your mates and go 'Oh, my missus has left me', and they go 'Oh, that's a bit rough', and that's the extent of the conversation."

The 41-year-old runs the Wildman charity in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, which brings men together to chat around a campfire.

"I met a guy a couple of weeks ago who wanted to learn how to talk because his mate had killed himself earlier in the year and he just wished he'd known what to say."

With the money raised on this trip, Mr Cope hopes to open other branches in four more cities.

But so far, Mr Cope has not raised as much as he would have liked.

He needs $24,000 by Friday and so far $2000 has been donated to the cause.

Donations can be made through the Spark My Potential programme, which will match dollar for dollar once $6000 has been raised.

If he doesn't reach the goal, then he doesn't get any of the pledged money, Mr Cope said.

Taking a fridge with him on his tour of the country was "as crazy as you can get".

The well-travelled appliance was a bit battered from the trip.

"I took him paddle-boarding and I've had kids skateboarding on him."

His journey started on November 4 and he had been hitchhiking in a "figure 8" path around the country. He and Steve were due to finish their trip on Friday night back in Wellington.