Billy, Wrangler and Meg are having a well earned rest day today at Neil and Sandy Booths property at Georges Creek. I’m staying in a\u00a0fantastic Hut\u00a0right on the Creek and it is awesome. I have some great photo’s I will put up\u00a0soon.\u00a0 I have been out of phone range since I left home and will be until next Sunday! Go Telstra.\u00a0 My horses\u00a0 have \u00a0been working hard since last Saturday when we left home and rode the 30kms into Willawarrin to start off on the trek on Sunday. The night at Willawarrin was fantastic and a huge crowd were there to support ride4acure. Overall $5 500 was made over the weekend for the Hannah Rose Melanoma Research Fund.\u00a0 A massive thank you to Aimee and Todd Wilson for hosting the ride4acure fundraiser at the Willawarrin Hotel and to all the fantastic generous businesses who donated goods for both the auction and also the BBQ at Bellbrook. Kempsey Stock and Lands Laurie Argue did another fantastic job with the auction, buying the ‘sell’ of the night for himself the Carlton Party Pack!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday morning kicked off with a donation of $1500 from the Sussman Foundation (collective of three local Rotary Clubs) to ride4acure, and also Father Peter Richards gave a moving Blessing of the Horses to start the trek. While we were gathered, 30 horse riders in a ‘horseshoe’ out the front of the Willawarrin Hotel, Coggie Wilshusen gave us a ‘on the spec’ poem that was brilliant.\u00a0 As we rode along Armidale Road many motorists gave donations and we were also ‘seranaded’ by an enthusiastic local playing a beautiful peice on his piano accordian for us as all the riders processed past his farm gate. Lots of people came out to say Hi and give us a wave.<\/p>\n
Sunday night\u00a0 Joe and\u00a0I stayed in Bellbrook with an old friend Ian Flood (ex Moparrabah) and Ross and Joan\u00a0Foster from Bellbrook kindly let me put my horses in\u00a0their paddock. Monday night Joe and I rode 30 kms to Smith’s Flat and stayed with friends from pony club Maryanne and Peter Flately.\u00a0 We rode in in the rain (it rained the first three day! on and off) got the horses bedded down for the night and then had a beautful lamb roast for dinner, baths and into bed!<\/p>\n
I have collected another $50 in donations yesterday\u00a0just riding along\u00a0 as I\u00a0rode over the “Goat Track” aka Armidale Road. Also a donation of livestock for our ride4acure cattle sale on August 21st in Kempsey.<\/p>\n
I have walked a couple of kms and went\u00a0barefoot through three mountain creeks to get to Neil& Sandy Booth’s house this morning\u00a0to get on their computer to update the blog! Now that’s dedication guys! And guess what here I am finally online and I’ve come without my computer cord to download photo’s for you! Next time. I am staying in the most fantastic hut on the creek that is available as a holiday cabin. Will post photo’s of it soon.<\/p>\n
If your keen you can go to facebook and Esther has downloaded photo’s from the first day onto our facebook ride4acure group. There’s also a link there for ABC interview and photo’s.\u00a0 The Mid North Coasts ABC Rural Reporter Kim Honan, rode with us the first day 23 kms from Willawarrin to Bellbrook and did an awesome job. I do think her muscles may’ve been a little sore the next day or two though!<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I head off and am riding to Jeogla to stay with good friends of Hannah’s the Frizzel family and then into Hillgrove on Friday visiting the Chandler School on the way.\u00a0 Sharon McIver and Emma Rossiter are riding with me for a couple of days as far as Chandler School.\u00a0 Sunday I will ride into Armidale.<\/p>\n
I find the most challenging part of the day the packing up of a morning. Saddling three horses and balancing all the packs is a big job.\u00a0 And knowing that if I don’t get things right it could cause Billy to get a sore back which is to be avoiced at all costs. The horses and myself, \u00a0remaing sound is my top priority.\u00a0 Lifting the packs all weighing over 20kgs each up to my shoulder height, Billy is 15.2hh so I’ve gotta lift it up to my shoulder to get it on the hooks. Then to top it off the big blue pack goes even higher up with all my camping gear in it above the green packs! Lucky that bike ride last year gave me muscles in my ear lobes!<\/p>\n
The ride through the upper Macleay has been magnificent, stunning gorge and river country, windy narrow mountain passes, very single lane! Two more days and I’m over the Great Divide and onto the Western side of the ranges.<\/p>\n
Joe rode with me up til yesterday on Gruggie, who was Hannah’s very first horse! Gruggie was very happy to have three great days riding and was happy as anything, I swear he was smiling! Said to Joe I think he’d like to go all the way to Melbourne!<\/p>\n
Joe’s home with his Dad and gone in today to Kempsey Show, then back at school from tomorrow. Joe will be joining me for different legs of the trek, next time I’ll see him is June 2nd at Narranderra, then again\u00a0 June 29th the last week of the trek. He’s such a great kid, and is totally dedicated to\u00a0 ride4acure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Billy, Wrangler and Meg are having a well earned rest day today at Neil and Sandy Booths property at Georges Creek. I’m staying in a\u00a0fantastic Hut\u00a0right on the Creek and it is awesome. I have some great photo’s I will put up\u00a0soon.\u00a0 I have been out of phone range since I left home and will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ride4acure.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}