The Junee to Jerra for Jase Walk was all about community, (two of them) all about committment and all about paying it back and forward.
The Independent caught up with well-known Junee resident Gav Lamb to find out what made two groups of people, one from Junee and the other from Jerrabomberra come together for Jason Smith to raise money for him and his plight.
Gav said, “We are raising funds for Jason Smith, he’s a Junee resident. Everyone knows Pete from the Fire Brigade and Terese from the Club, he’s one of their two boys.
“He’s been diagnosed witha type of blood cancer, MultipleMyeloma, and it’s a bit of an interesting one, and you never want to get diagnosed with cancer, and this is a particularly weird one and if you have a read up on it, you go geez, I don’t want that.
“It’s one that is going to require a lot of ongoing treatment for years. It’s not one that you have a fight with and beat it or lose it. It’s an ongoing one.
“We said let’s get in and help these guys out because he is going to burn through his sick leave and annual leave very very quickly.
“He’s a typical bloke, has a wife, four beautiful kids, a mortgage.
“We said we better get in and do something and Junee is pretty good at that and for a while everyone was waiting for someone to do something and it didn’t get started, so I got on to a group of mates and said I think we should do something and I came up with this idea of a walk because ‘Smudgie’ as I call him, had run a marathon raising money for my boy years ago and at the time it seemed to be all good, but I look back on it and it changed the trajectory of his life and that’s interesting, pay it forward, and this happens to be going in reverse, he ran a marathon, so I better make it something grand and I couldn’t run a marathon as I’d fall apart, but I could probably walk one.
“I thought so why don’t we walk one from our place to his place, Junee to Jerrabomberra and that’s where it came from and then I thought I’ll get a heap of mates on board and they will walk with us and between all of us doing a relay walk we could surely make that.
“That’s where the idea started and now it’s 40-50 people walking 230ks. Mathew Cummins did a fantastic job of co-ordinating all the walking aspects of it with the scheduling, the roster, the drop off points, the pickup points, the route, he even worked it out and had it all mapped out for everyone perfectly.
“Then there was the little fundraisers at either end, the launch and the welcome. It was really good.“It was all put together really well by the organising committee. All I did was come up with the stupid idea to walk a long way!
“It started on Thursday and finished late Sunday morning.
“We started with the initial target of $50,000 because you have to have a number, so we started on Go FundMe with fifty grand.
“We got to $40,000 pretty quickly and I knew there was still some sponsorship coming in and at Jerrabomberra they still had a lot of stuff they had lined up and the number has been climbing and climbing and I think we will get in excess of $80,000. It would be great to get up to $100,000; $80,000 at least. It’s a great effort.
“A lot of the walkers, and there was a big Jerrabomberra connect from their end, but a lot of the walkers that did all the hard yakka at the start for the first two or three days were Junee based and they need a huge pat on the back.
“Some people did 90ks ver the four days; one guy did 65ks straight; one guy ran 18ks one day and 24k the next – up and down every hill in the mountains between here and Canberra, and he did probably a tough a marathon as you could probably do.
“Every second person had blisters and bleeding. It’s kind of funny, everyone says oh walking, that’s not hard, but when you start walking, it’s constant of eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, it starts to really take its toll. The body is probably not used to that wear and tear.
“I know some people were done after four hours. They found it pretty hard yakka.We were striding it out, it wasn’t like we were just wandering along like brown’s cows, they were going along at 6.2k clicks, they were flying.
“We were doing ten minute kilometres, which was quicker than we expected. “There was a few breakdowns and things, they had to pull up and get a few running repairs and then rejoin the crew.
“In Adam Perry’s case when he stripped his heel he got it attended to and instead of jumping on board and catching up to us as we were up the road a bit, he ran to catch up. He’s a machine. Once he decided he was going to do it, he just put his head down and went.
“It was really successful. Everyone had a good time. The little get together we had at Sunday lunch at Jerrabomberra was welld one. It was good.
“There was a few why am I questioning life choices as we were doing it, and I thought next time we are going to do a shorter one! That was the consensus from the voices in my head.
JUNEE RAFFLE PRIZE WINNERS!!! Thank you to all our volunteers for selling raffle tickets over the past weeks and of course to our supporters who purchased tickets to go towards this amazing cause!!Winners and prizes as follows – Billy Seaton Framed 2023 signed State of Origin QLD jersey- Jack Wright; $300 dressed lamb from Adam Hands – Lucas Walker; Licorice Factory hamper- Jason Crowder; Lamb, wine and cheese platter from J.A. Haulage – Rhys Diggins; Framed 2016 signed State of Origin NSW jersey- Donny Walker; $300 dressed lamb from Adam Hands – Kylie Priest; $300 dressed lamb from Brads Butchers donated by Chris Lawson – Steven Priest; $500 Brads Butchery meat voucher – Bec Billingham; $400 Amanda Riley Creative voucher- Damien Willis; $50 voucher and pamper pack from House 2 Home – Brian Higginson; framed print donated by Framed by Bek.