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OVFIRE is a Brisbane Queensland entrant in Variety Children's Charity Bash

events that helps raise funds for sick children

PLEASE take the time to help those that help us, at the bottom of this site is a list of our sponsors, shop with them!

Ok so we did something a little silly , we went on a Bash and forgot to tell you all here , whoops , sorry , my bad , his bad , the dog ate my home work and any other reason we can find.

No that we have that out of the way , we are back , safe and sound and with lots of images as usual , the last two year the format has changed a bit we used to do daily updates but with so much happening on the road and not always having a internet connection things cant always happen as fast as we would like , so we decided it was easier to do one big update on our return.

Welcome to this years, 2015 XXXX Gold Variety Bash adventure of OV Fire from Cairns to Kingfisher Bay (Fraser Is). This year the bash team, David (Lloydy) Lloyd, Lawrence (Tinka) Bell and Graham (ILean) Bridges drove just under 6000km and that’s including the 1700km drive up to the start. Before we left Brisbane for the start line, we were officially fare welled by our Commissioner, Katarina Carrol, and Senior Officers which took time out, to wish us well. Thanks for your well wishes.

This year was a very special year, as OV Fire became a “LEGEND” 10 years of bashing, Oh, and so did Lloydy! A legend is the recognition Variety gives you when you do 10 Bashes. The night before the Bash started, a presentation was held for the recognition of all the milestones that the bashers have done, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years and there are two bashers that have done all 26 years or 26 Variety Bashes… I find that amazing.

We started early in the morning at Cairns and went North up the coast line (such a breath taking drive) for 100km or so and then turned left and headed west. That was the last time we saw the coast for 10 days. It didn’t take long to go from lush rain forests and green fields to dusty barren land. The drought has hit hard out west and the people that live out there you can see their desperation in trying to keep things going. In saying that, they all had time for us and always made us feel welcome.

The 10 days of bashing had something different for us each day and the scenery changes so much from day to day. When you think there is nothing around for miles, except very dusty and very rough roads, you suddenly come across beautiful flowing creeks, high mountain rangers, flat plans, thick scrub and the good old Australian bush. As stated before, it was very dusty and one of the roughest bashes OV Fire has done. Again we had official duties to do for Variety (check points and marshalling car parking) and all wasn’t plain sailing. The poor old girl (OV Fire) did have a little failure on the way. We destroyed a Harmonic Balancer, I won’t go into what it is… just say an engine part. Made a horrible noise when it went. I did think we blew the engine up and thought this is it for us. But once I looked into the bad noise further, I discovered I could get us going again with the help of an Oxy Acetylene cutting torch (basically cut the broken part off). We took it easy after that, and she got us safely to the finish.

This year, I can’t say our professional capabilities were not used. Coming into Springsure, one of the bashers was involved in a serious car roll over and we were asked to turn out to help. We were told the car rolled three times and the car needed to be cut open to release the driver. She was hurt, but not seriously and was released a few days later out of Hospital. It was a great effort by all the emergency services, Police, Fire and Ambulance services to help make this a positive outcome. We were told on the last night of the bash, that the team from the roll over, already had another car to do up and will be on the next years bash.

We visited a number of schools again and talked to some of the children about fire safety. One school in particular, Cameron Downs State School, only has five students. We stopped there for morning tea on a Saturday, and all the students and all their families turned up to put on a great show for the bashers which included home cooked cakes and tarts… WOW!!!

I’ll just list the days and the overnight stops so you can gauge were we travelled;

·         Day 1 – Cairns to Chillagoe via Dimbulah

·         Day 2 – Chillagoe to Kidston via Lynd (smallest licensed pub, fits two people)

·         Day 3 – Kidston to Hughenden via Clothes Peg Station

·         Day 4 – Hughenden to Barcaldine via Muttaburra (went to the horse races)

·         Day 5 – Barcaldine to Lake Maraboon via Alpha

·         Day 6 – Lake Maraboon to Lake Maraboon (day off) Just outside Emerald

·         Day 7 – Lake Maraboon to Mitchell via Arcadia Valley and Injune

·         Day 8 – Mitchell to Taroom via Surat

·         Day 9 – Taroom to Gayndah via Theodore

·         Day 10 – Gayndah to Kingfisher Bay

The end or the finish line was different this year, it is the first time the Bash has ever finished by all the Bashers walking over the finish line without their Bash cars.

Variety raised $1.1 million on this year’s Bash for the disadvantaged kids of Queensland, and as an individual team, OV Fire raised over $15 000. Very pleased with this effort again. I would once again like to thank, OV Fire, the Bash team and their families, our sponsors and supporters and finally Mackay and Emerald Fire Stations for putting us up with a comfy bed for a night J  

Day 1 – Cairns to Chillagoe via Dimbulah

Day 2 – Chillagoe to Kidston via Lynd (smallest licensed pub, fits two people)

Day 3 – Kidston to Hughenden via Clothes Peg Station

Day 4 – Hughenden to Barcaldine via Muttaburra (went to the horse races)

Day 5 – Barcaldine to Lake Maraboon via Alpha

Day 6 – Lake Maraboon to Lake Maraboon (day off) Just outside Emerald

Day 7 – Lake Maraboon to Mitchell via Arcadia Valley and Injune

Day 8 – Mitchell to Taroom via Surat

Day 9 – Taroom to Gayndah via Theodore

Day 10 – Gayndah to Kingfisher Bay

The last words for this year.

Also another successful year for OV FIRE. Time to stand her down for another year, but OV FIRE will be back next year for the 11th year of bashing.

Thanks to all, see you next year ☺