The 2016 Young Australians of the Year and Orange Sky Laundry founders Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett will be in Newcastle this week.

The Newcastle stop is part of a five-day and 2000-kilometre drive from Brisbane to Melbourne in one of their free mobile laundry service vans.

They will immerse themselves in communities along the way to help “our homeless friends wash and dry” while also searching for community members worthy of nominations for the 2017 Australian of the Year Awards.

“We’re looking forward to meeting people in communities along the way and seeing the work of fellow volunteer groups and local community organisations,” Marchesi said. 

“It’s the unsung local heroes and the quiet achievers in each community who deserve to be nominated for the Australian of the Year Awards and we’re hoping to encourage people to submit nominations.”

They will also be raising awareness of homelessness and sourcing volunteers to help service a van in Newcastle.

The vans cost $100,000 each to build and are all custom fitted with two commercial washing machines and two dryers.

“There is a lot of interest in launching a service in Newcastle,” Marchesi said.

“We’re very close, we feel, to knowing that we need a service there.

“We are hoping to secure funding and have a van in Newcastle by the end of the year.”

Marchesi and Patchett built a free mobile laundry service in their old van nearly two years ago to help homeless people in Brisbane.

Their work earned them the Australian of the Year honour and they have since expanded their organisation to a fleet of 10 vans stationed around the country.

Orange Sky Laundry services 62 locations and more than 5.58 tonnes of laundry each week and, equally as important, Marchesi said they facilitate countless hours of community conversations.

“We are reaching out to communities like Newcastle to really remind people that there are people all around Australia that are worthy of attention,” he said.

“If two random blokes from Brisbane were selected for this honour then everyone can be.

“We are really excited to continue to help people that are homeless all around the world be better connected with their community but also to remind ourselves and other people that we can all have a big impact on communities by just doing really simple things.”

Orange Sky has services in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Sydney, Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart.

Australian of the Year awards rely on public nominations and can be submitted via australianoftheyear.org.au until August 7.