With most of the riders having arrived at Monto the day before the official start of the run we had the good folk from the Monto Show Society going flat out that night manning the bar and feeding us, and much to their credit, even after all hard work they had put in, they went and donated two hundred dollars of the profits back to the SCA. The Duck In, a little corner shop opposite the showground also donated a portion of the profits from its sales to the riders, and as was repeatedly proven, this sort of generosity was typical of the way the people in the towns we visited throughout the week embraced the Poker Run and its participants.

So, already off to a good start with the SCA’s fundraising for Spina Bifida, Hydrocephalus the following morning had most of the riders up early with their bikes loaded and enjoying a hearty breakfast prior to this years run heading down for the first overnighter at Kumbia with a stopover at the Durong School thrown in on the way, the welcome that the SCA Poker Run received at the school certainly bode well for the rest of the week, as, upon our arrival we were greeted by dozens of tables and chairs set out for us under shade trees and a huge spread of food. Given the amount of tucker and the fact that the school had only 39 pupils I reckon just about everyone in the district would have had some sort of input into looking after us, and I would seriously doubt that any of us left there that day without taking away the knowledge that good old country hospitality is definitely alive and well in Australia.

This pattern was repeated at the other overnight stops at Boonah, Beerwah and Maidenwell and the schools at Quinalow, Peachester and Kilkivan, and to be honest, if I tried to include a mention of all the people along the way that donated time or money towards the SCA’s fundraiser it would end up being quite a few pages long and I apologise for not doing so, but suffice to say, there’s a hell of a lot of people out there that should give themselves a well earned pat on the back. There’s no doubt that a lot of the hard yards involved in running this event have already been done by the time it starts, however, if they choose to do so, there are plenty of opportunities along the way for non SCA members to have an input into it as well, there are the obvious things like buying raffle tickets and participating in the planned evenings entertainment of course, or, as quite a few riders did when people asked what all the bikes were all about, managed to canvass a few donations themselves, and then there’s the simple things like making sure that when you pack the bike up in the morning that you don’t leave any rubbish behind that the SCA members have to pick up before they finally depart themselves.

I think it fair to say that this Poker Run is probably unique in so far as you are not on a fairly strict time limit to get to the next stop, with the longest sections only taking at the very most a half day of really slow riding to complete there’s plenty of leisure time to do detours etc, a couple of days prior planning using Google once the destinations are known would allow for the opportunity to stop with more than enough time to see things of interest at places along the way, and of course there is no reason why you could not take an entirely different route altogether to the next overnight stop if one was available, plus throw in the rest day at one of the stops along the way, hell, it’s just like going on your holidays except you are with about four hundred other family members.

In closing I would like to congratulate the SCA for another first rate effort, and to thank the South Burnett-Maidenwell Astronomical Observatory for only charging us half price for a very interesting and informative look at the night sky with their telescopes and then promptly donating all the money back, and last but not least, thank you to the one person we would all prefer not to need, Tony Carr, who followed the run for it’s entire distance in the fully equipped RACQ backup vehicle, and he also donated all of the money raised in the whip round for him at the runs end as well.

BTW. The schools that we stopped at had done their own fundraising throughout the year and as a way of saying thanks the SCA gives all the kids a few laps of the school oval on the back of the bikes, no photos of the kiddies for the website unfortunately as I don’t know if their parents would give the nod, but the shit eating grins on their faces as they went round said it all and hopefully they will like the photos that I took of them when I send them to the school principals.   Check out the Southern Cross site.

Mark this one down in your calendar.