Well Adelaide’s flight to the UK has been confirmed as the 13th June 2018. Adelaide and I will be flying with Equestrian Australia’s recently partnered horse freight company Equine International Airfreight. Our flight will be departing from Melbourne.
As you can imagine there’s still lots to organise! Oh let the packing begin for both horse and human… but it will have to wait until tomorrow as today Adelaide and I are off to the lovely Wallaby Hill Farm for the NSW Squad School. For some last minute lessons with Prue Barrett and Rod Brown. I always look forward to our squad training days at WHF, beautiful property, amazing arenas and surfaces to ride on and of course great coaches. Tomorrow will be gallop day at the lovely Hannover Lodge managed by Hinnerk Huppe. Adelaide and I are very lucky to be able to use the hill/sand gallop track which is conveniently next door to Willow Park. Friday will be busy getting the Bates Equestrian Cross Country course ready for our Bates Ultimate Training Clinic’s that is being held over the weekend to help raise money for our trip to the UK. Lessons and training rounds will be coached by myself and the wonderful Sandy Lucas. Next week will be packing, packing and some more packing. Some how I will also try to get to Melbourne 3DE to coach students that are competing in the CCI1* & 2*. I will also fit in driving Adelaide to Melbourne for his flight and try have some last minute family time. The last 10 days have been pretty crazy and I already feel like I’m living out of a suitcase. The team had 3 days in Tamworth competing. I didn’t ride but drove the gooseneck, groomed for William, coached lots of students and cooked for the extended family. Home one day and then headed to Perth for 3 days of coaching. Arrived in Perth to find out Matthew Bates had taken an acrobatic tumble off a breaker, Matt managed to land on his feet only to have the breaker stand on his foot and break it. Matthew is now out of action for 6 weeks. Had a great three days coaching and managed to miss all the wet weather that Perth received. We also had a great fundraising night which helped raise nearly $1 600. It was great to catch up with so many people from the west coast especially those friends that have been following my career right from the start. Yes there were a few stories told about my youth. Back home for a few days and on Monday we headed to Orange for Williams Cross Country running schools competition. William ran super despite having a cold and finished in 10th place which now sees him go to the next competition at Eastern Creek on the 14th June. Which is a little sad as Adelaide and I will be up in the air somewhere and will miss seeing William run. The Campaign Aachen/Tryon fundraising is still in full force with the online auction nearly ready to launch. Thank you to the amazing people that have donated gifts for this auction. The auction will be hosted by nominate and will be live soon. If you would like to donate a prize or gift for the online auction please contact either Claire Earle [email protected] or Georgie Lorson [email protected] The GoFundMe fundraising page is up and running and many people have already donated. Thank you to those people, your generosity is greatly appreciated. If you would like to donate please click on the link below https://au.gofundme.com/christinebatesWEGcampaign We are also in the process of setting up an Australian Sports Foundation fundraising page which will enable donors to make a tax deductable donation. We will let you all know when it’s ready to use. If you don’t wish to donate to my fundraising cause that’s OK. But I would personally love it if you would consider donating to another great charity in honour of a very special person that is no longer with us- Caitlyn Fischer. Caitlyn’s parents Mark and Ailsa are supporting a great charity called Tabitha Australia in loving memory of their daughter. For more information on this very deserving cause please head over to http://www.tabithaaustralia.org.au/. Looking forward to keeping you all updated over the next crazy two weeks! Christine Xx
1 Comment
|