The Great Vic Trek

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After many months of planning, telephone calls, emails, and discussions, December finally arrived and with a bang and saw Apex Victoria involved in two major projects.

The first being “The Great Vic Trek”, our State Service Project assisting the raising of funds and the profile disability service provider Yooralla, and the Second being the APEX Santa Tours with the Apex Club of Berowra in NSW (more on the Santa Sleigh event at a later date).

The Great Vic Trek

The Great Vic Trek was 21 days of travelling around Victoria with a great bunch of people and a number of celebrities and their partners raising funds for Yooralla. This event was run between the 6th of December – 27th December and covered about 1800 kilometres.

Apex's involvement was providing BBQ fundraisers at various hospital locations, and assisting in the raffle and auctions at the destination locations each day.

In addition to these efforts Mel our State President and myself (Phil) Service Director also assisted with the coordination of moving vehicles, locating lunch and locations to eat, ferry celebrities or the cars between the various towns, and moving the van that had the Apex BBQ attached to it.

There are many clubs and individuals that were involved with The Trek, but I would like to make special mention to the following:

Apex 40 Club of Diamond Valley and Greg Scully

Without Greg’s tireless efforts in cleaning up and restoring the Diamond Valley trailer after it’s overworking at the Black Saturday Bushfires at Kinglake, we would not have had a BBQ trailer to travel the Trek with….. many thanks Greg….

State President Melinda Grose

Mel took over from me at Wangaratta and continued through to Warrnambool with the transporting of the van & BBQ and the numerous other activities that occurred during the day, getting lunches, finding lunch stops, getting the BBQ, the bread, the snags etc for each location, and then arranging with the clubs to have people available for the days auctions and raffles.  Thank you Mel for your assistance and my apologies for making you share a swimming pool with Tony Shaw.

Travis Gunston – Myrtleford Club

Travis met me at Bright at about 2.00pm, thinking he would do a couple of service hours, with raffles and auctions, and then get out of their. How wrong was he...  After doing a couple of hours on raffles, Travis then accompanied Paul from Yooralla back to Melbourne with the bicycles while I drove Danny Frawley Paul Tuddenhan and Mark Foley back to Danny’s house.  From Danny’s house we went to Rowville and to drop me off and then Travis travelled back to Wangaratta to drop of “The Trek”, before collecting his own car and going back to Myrtleford. Thanks Trav that was close to a 10 hour day...

Bairnsdale Apex Club - Jeff Thorpe & Gerard Ward

Jeff and Gerard not only assisted with the raffles at Bairnsdale, but the following night they also assisted at Omeo, for about 4 hours and then made the trip back to Bairnsdale that night ( a 3 hour trip).

Celebrities

There were many celebrities and their partner that were involved along the way, and these included Dean Jones, his wife Jane and daughter Gus, Andrew Startin and his wife Tamara, Giann Rooney, Billy Brownless, Doug Hawkins, Matthew Richardson, Michael Christian, Danny Frawley, Paul Tuddenham, Simon Madden, Mark Foley, David King, Tony Shaw, Michael Roberts, John Blackman, Steve Moneghetti, Rodney Hogg, Scott West, Peter Everett, and Robert Harvey.  For those members that participated, catching up with these celebrities and just being able to have a chat or photo drink or meal was a great opportunity.

While on celebrities there are a couple of guys that should be included with the list above and these include Apex Foundation Director and all round good guy, Graham Henry, his son Phil, and the bloke that almost took over from Dean Jones as the face of the trek, Yooralla client Chris Riddiford.

Along the Trek we had many clubs and members were involved in raffles, auctions or BBQ’s and we hope that we have you all.

Editor’s Note

Many thanks also to Phil Keily for the work he put into the event. He put in a power of work with the first 10 days of the Trek ferrying celebrities back and forwards from Gippsland to Melbourne and vice-versa and was forever on the phone keeping me updated on the progress of the Trek. Thanks again Phil your efforts were very much appreciated and made my part on the Trek so much easier. (Mel)

Phil and I have calculated the service hours that members contributed to the Trek and estimate it to be around 450 hours. This includes 80 hours for Phil and 90 hours for Mel.

The Trek handed over a cheque to Yooralla for $300,000 at the MCG on the 27th December, since then more funds have been raised totalling almost $400,000.

Thanks to everyone who assisted along the way, we hope you enjoyed yourselves. There is talk of another Trek (of some kind) next year; we hope that Apex can be a part of it.

YIA Mel & Phil

Vic Trek Photo Gallery