NQ 2 NT Journal Entry
Packing Day
By: Mark "Sharky" Smoothy
Welcome to the first journal entry of my extended 16 day trip to Darwin and the second leg of my seven year quest to ride around Australia in seven stages. This journey is sponsored by Bottlemart and I can't thank them enough for showing faith in our ability to continue to raise much needed funds in the search for a cure to cancer. All donations from this extended trip will go to the mater Foundation, just the same as the main Smiddy Challenge.
If you followed my journey last year you may well remember I rode the length of Queensland, from the border of Coolangatta to Cape York, a distance of 3200km in 21 days. This year's journey will cover a combined distance of nearly 4000km's over a 24 day period. Fellow Smiddy rider, Scott "Falcon" May is joining me for the journey, while our road crew consists of the ever reliable Kevin Enchelmaier (Smiddy road crew volunteer for the past 3 years who accompanied me for the Cape trip last year). Also my youngest sister Kim is giving up two weeks of her time to keep Kevin company, to help out and to see the Australian outback for the very first time in her 44 years of life.
Two days ago ‘Falcon' and I completed the fourth annual Bottlemart 2009 Smiling for Smiddy Challenge from Brisbane to Home Hill in 8 days. What a successful journey that was with the 50 riders and 10 Westpac road crew members raising a staggering amount of money that should see us reach our goal of raising a half million dollars. Already we are missing our Smiddy team and wish they could all join us for this next leg... thinking of you guys.
Sunday Sep 13th was spent helping the Smiddy crew packing bikes and gear and getting them to the Townsville airport for their flights home. Sunday afternoon the Butler and Smiddy families threw their full support behind Scotty and me in helping us to prepare for our trip to Darwin. We spent the night in Townsville with fellow Smiddy rider Anthony Marano and his wife Donna.
Monday Sep 14th was a huge day for us with various jobs needing to be done, like collecting the 4WD from Sargeants 4WD Hire, who kindly sponsored the vehicle at less than half price. Camping gear needed to be brought for the expected 8 nights of sleeping under the stars, shopping for groceries, picking up a satellite phone from Navcom Electronics, who have donated it free of charge, and fueling up was easy thanks to the support of Reliance Petroleum who donated $1000.00 worth of fuel cards. David Smiddy works for ITT and they kindly allowed us the full use of their facilities throughout the day.
Win TV and the Townsville Bulletin popped over to do stories on the Smiddy Challenge and the Darwin trip.
Fellow Townsville Smiddy riders, Anthony Marano, Tony Lewis, Rowan Desailly and Brisbane's Rowan Foster were there for the media stuff and helping to spread the Smiddy word. It was a huge day and considering the trip does not begin until Sep 15th (tomorrow) we are already in awe and extremely grateful for the help thus far.
A big thank you to all our friends involved over the past couple of days and especially to Rowan Desailly for buying us two swags and to Shane Butler (road crew for Cape trip last year) who spent all day today helping us shop and pack. As the 4WD was only a 3 seater, Shane also went out of his way to drive us to Innisfail, a six hour round trip. Incredible kindness from Shane and much appreciated for sure. His beautiful wife Rita baked up dozens of homemade ‘secret recipe' type Anzac cookies.
We finally left Townsville at 5:30pm, a full 3 hours behind schedule, but on the way nonetheless to Innisfail, our starting point for the next 2400 kilometres.
On the way we had a brief stop to say hello to Alan Power of Bottlemart in Cardwell, who helped us out for our Cape trip last year. Once again his patrons coughed up some cash and Alan fed us and made sure we did not go thirsty.
We had a quick photo opportunity outside the Bottlemart neon sign with Alan and his wife Marg before continuing on our way to our accommodation at Innisfail. We arrived here at 11pm and we are hoping to be on our way tomorrow morning by 8:30am for the first road stage of 160 hilly kilometres.
I hope you are all happy and in good health and I look forward to entertaining you all with some special moments over the next 16 days of riding.
See you all tomorrow sometime soon.
PS. Just wanted to say a huge thank you to Janet Curran in Townsville. Each year Janet shouts all of us a massage. Kevin and Scotty pass on their thanks Janet. Unfortunately I was unable to attend my session as we had so much to do yesterday but you know I appreciate the generous offer.
Sharky.