Thursday, July 17, 2008

Brisbane to Broome

<--Jon (left with Amos), myself and Steve

I have met some interesting people here in Broome. The guys camping in our backyard are no exception!

They arrived yesterday evening from Brisbane. So what, you ask?
They CYCLED from Brisbane!!!

Father and son, Steve and Jon have spent the last 10 weeks (and one day) cycling across the country from Brisbane to Broome in order to raise money for charities Plan and Beyond Blue.

Jenner and Rachel met them whilst camping in the Kimberley 2 weeks ago and invited them to stay. So we were their welcome party (sort of). Jenner did buy a bottle of Champers which was enjoyed by all!

We were expecting them to jump straight into the shower or bath for a good wash and then sleep. But this was not to be! No, they cooked us dinner as thank-you for letting them stay! So after riding 5500km+, they had enough energy (and left over food) to feed us!

There is a googlemap of their route at Sueblimely .

You can check out details of and reason for their journey, Jon's blog, and (more importantly) donate through their website:
http://www.brisbanetobroome.org

Why Plan?
Jon has cycled through SE Asia and seen poverty first hand. He also did some service in Vietnam, building a house which he was saddened to find did not benefit the family, but cost them their income. You see, they made rice paper using a fire in their house which had been well ventilated, not having what we consider a 'proper' roof.

Jon wanted to raise money for an organisation which he knew really helped people. Through a lot of research, he found that Plan work to reduce child poverty and employ local people. Plan International is presently working with over 3.5 million families in 20,000 communites around the world.

They are very interesting guys, so it is a privilege to have them stay.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is an incredible achievement isn't it. What did they cook for dinner?

For future reference to - include a google map in a blog. Go to the Google map itself (via view larger map if what you want is already displayed in a blog post) and click on "links to this page" Copy and paste the embed code into the html area of your write post page.

UltraViolet said...

great, thanks for that!

We had roti/mountain bread wraps with chicken and salad (supplied by us), tabooli, cheese and TVP (tofu) provided by them! Plus lots of herbs (theirs too!). Very yum!

Anonymous said...

Apart from the Tofu it sounds good. I love the photo of you in this post too btw. xxx Oh I think that is the first time I have put kisses in a blog comment :-)