Compass Run – 19,208km over 54 days
– Article written by Charlie Crossley, Beachport Liquid Minerals NT/QLD Regional Manager –
To say this was a small ride for charity is an understatement.
The ride was challenging from the outset and even before we started. Leaving Greenslopes Private Hospital in Brisbane on 28th October at 8am, we then made our way to Princess Alexander Hospital to say goodbye to Annette (my wife) who had a small operation the day prior. Not exactly the way we wanted to start.
Start we did and we were off. We got split up in the Brisbane traffic as John Burton headed on an alternative route and we finally met at Aussie World a few hours later… This was to be a common occurrence.
People have asked on our return, ‘What was the toughest bit?’ ‘The best part?’ “The prettiest place you visited?’ ‘What were your major challenges?’ All very valid questions although all very hard to specifically answer. So with this in mind, I will give you my thoughts as I’m sure it would be different for the other 3 blokes.
Without question for me, the toughest sector on the bike (and mentally) was the ride from Laura NQ to Bamaga at the tip of Cape York, our first compass point. This challenged me as a rider, very quickly showed up my lack of skill handling a big bike in sand and bulldust holes; contrary to belief I had some quite extensive practice on dirt but nothing to prepare me for this.
The temperature across the North of the Nation was oppressive to say the least, the humidity was exceptionally high and backed by temperatures up to 46 degrees certainly challenged body, mind and machine. Not to be outdone with temperature records, Southern Victoria and NSW hit us with some cold weather that the Northern boys really struggled with. We crossed to Snowy River and stopped on the other side of the bridge to take a photo and it was 3.1 degrees at 9am.
The Kimberley never fails to deliver a beauty not seen anywhere else in the world, this along with some magnificent coastal towns down the west coast of Australia, and the magnificently picturesque Great Australian Bight are my definite favourite places we had the fortune to pass through.
The generosity of the people we met was simply amazing, so very humbling. Donations of $5 to $500. The donations of assistance, time, meals and accommodation all left us all speechless. This, along with the magnificent support from our sponsors, without whom we could never have attempted this amazing adventure and would never have been able to raise the money and awareness for the “Without a Ribbon” charity. Rare cancer is not publically known about and not in the main sphere, so I hope that with our trip we have been able to get this disease into the spotlight more.
To date we have raised approximately $50,000.00, although we are still waiting to finalise our Paspaley Pearl Raffle as we are waiting to receive a couple of final books, once these have been received we can draw the Pearl Pendant and will have a better idea of the total tally so far.
But wait…. there’s more. Compass Run will be running another monster raffle in the coming months with a prize of approximately $18,000.00 worth of adventures in the Northern Territory for 4 people! We will be sure to advise you when tickets are ready for purchase.
You can keep updated with our fundraising efforts and see all of the photos from our trip at www.compassrun.com.au
