Day 6: Longreach to Clermont —Black Dog Ride Hi all, This seemed the longest leg of our journey. Probably because we took the opportunity to visit the QANTAS Museum before leaving Longreach, delaying our starting time. The experience of parking the bikes under the wing of a 747 was amazing. Standing back, we could see how puny the bikes looked by comparison with the huge QANTAS jet liner. The photo’s our official photographer, Lorree Cox took will definitely be in our promotions for next years’ NQ Black Dog Ride. If you haven’t seen them yet, check out Lorree’s Face Book page. From Longreach it was off to Barcaldine where we fuelled up and dropped off some of our brochures to Liz Lynch, Health Promotions Officer for the RFDS. Then on the Jericho and Alpha where the lovely folk at Tilley’s Café sorted out the lunchtime hunger pangs. By now it was well after 1pm, so it was heads down and bums up (well they had been sitting on them for 5 days already) and on to Emerald. A brief fuel stop at Caltex to top up the Parry Nissan support vehicle courtesy of APM (Australian Petroleum Maintenance) and on to the last leg of Day 6 to Clermont via Capella. We arrived at the Caravan Park at 6pm and were quickly given our cabins. Our Hosts, John and Ann organized a BBQ and entertainment from Townsville Country muso’s Yvonne and Brian to help us with our fundraising. They invited all their friends from the caravan park to join us and what a night! There would have been about 100 people there, all having a great time. Ride Captain and organizer Ben (Bender) Price spoke about the purpose of the Black Dog Ride in raising funds and awareness of depression and suicide in our communities. I had a few minutes to talk about the work of Life Line and Mental Health First Aid and encouraged everyone to do the MHFA course for the benefit of their friends, family and communities. I also shared some notes I had been keeping on the various transgressions of ride members over the past 6 days. These notes formed the basis of the fines we imposed. Everything from losing various bits of kit, to being late for morning muster, to minor misdemeanors. The eagle eyes of the three members of the support crew saw and noted everything! We quickly exhausted the coinage (and notes) of the riders, so the caravan park guests generously dipped into their pockets to help out. After all the fun and games, music and dancing it was off to bed and our beauty sleep in preparation for the final leg to Charters Towers and Townsville and an early start tomorrow. Again, thank you to those who have made recent donations. If you would like to join them, log onto https://blackdog-ridearoundaustralia-2014.everydayhero/au/philippa Cheers for now, Philippa
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 13:18:51 +0000