There was an excellent turnout from Wagin District High School with more than 200 students taking part.

However, in contrast to the same event two years ago, community member numbers were down.

In 2006 more than 400 people from Wagin participated, earning themselves a place in the Guinness Book of Records, as some of the 100,915 people who walked across 516 locations.

The record was lost to Canada in 2007 and local coordinator, Wagin Shire recreation manager Stuart Johansson, had hoped for an even better turnout this year.

The total number of walkers who left the starting post on the school oval at 12noon was 253. A few stragglers followed who were not counted.

John Johansson, who took on the role of official registrar for the event, said: “We were happy with the turnout considering the weather,” which was cloudy with some light drizzle.

Wagin was just one centre participating in the walk.

There were more than 900 separate sites across Australia.

At 12noon on the Monday more than 100,000 West Australians attempted to break the world record for the most number of people walking simultaneously for at least 1km. To break the record Australia needed over 231,635 people to compete.