Geoff's Blog

Day 2, waking up at the Novatel Barossa on Saturday morning, thinking that maybe 2.00 am was a tad late to go to bed, coffee and sitting on the veranda and slowly waking was needed. A continental breakfast was enjoyed at the Novetel’s restaurant.

It was decided the night before that as the Wombats had a 10:24 am start to the Amazing Race we would go up to the driving range and tee off a bucket of golf balls. Mike is left handed, so we all thought it would be a good idea to try using his driver to hit a couple of balls each. With some concentration, as a right hander using a left handed club I swung down hit the ball with gusto, the golf ball glanced of the head of the driver straight into my ankle, causing considerable amusement for Mike , Paul and Aaron.

The race started at the Lyndoch Institute, our first instructions was to head to the Whispering Wall at the Barossa Valley Reservoir. We also had photo challenge items to collect, a lady gardening, team members in a field of wild flowers, monkeying around with Monkeys and a Hippopotamus.

The challenge at the Whispering Wall was for 2 members of the team to run over to the other side of the dam wall, interpretate 2 names from a Auslan Interpreter and relay the names back to the other members on the other side of the dam taking advantage of the walls acoustics, all in 2 minutes 30 seconds.  Paul and Aaron ran over to the other side and successfully translated the 2 names in the allotted time frame. Coming back from the other side of the dam was not part of the task, Mike and I knew that, but Paul and Aaron didn’t, so with a little encouragement we got them to run back so they would be with in the time frame.

Our next task was to visit a nursery just outside of Williamstown, and plant native seedlings to be used for regrowth areas, quite an easy task, put all the small pots in to a large frame, fill with soil, plant the seeds at a certain depth sprinkle with some slow release fertiliser and jobs done. Hopefully our carefully planted seedling will become mature trees.

Part of the photo challenge was to get pictures of the team members monkeying around with Monkeys and also a picture of a Hippo. Mike had offered to have a picture taken of him, as the Hippo, instead we called into the local ToysRUs store and found some stuffed toy Monkeys and Hippos . Had to feel sorry for ToysRUs, as there would have been a precession of The Amazing Racers converging on their store.

The Tea Tree Gully Civic Park was the scene of a couple of quick photo challenges, all easily completed and then we were sent to Montezuma’s Mexican Restaurant for lunch. Once again we needed to stay at the restaurant for a minimum of 30 minutes before we could go on to our next challenge. On looking around the restaurant at the fellow racegoers, they were all looking very weary and tired.

As we left the restaurant we received our next task, go to the brickworks market and find a stall with a knitted Banana in Pyjama, not sure if it was B1 or B2. The lady at the stall would hold the next clue.

At the start of the race we were given a phone number, that could be called if we were unable to work out a clue, for the answer to the clue $25 would be charged. Team Wombats needed to make the call, Aami Stadium was the port of call for our next challenge.

Aami Stadium is the home to the Adelaide Crows Football Club and the venue for the last challenge. There was a couple of hand to eye challenges, all completed with ease by the athletic Wombat Team, a kick at goals, once again easily completed. The next challenge, singing the Crow’s club song, at best Paul would be the only team member to regularly watch Football and the Crows are not on his list, the rest of us, well we just didn’t have a clue.

Our version of the Crows club song goes like this, we knew some of the song as we had heard the other teams sing.

We’re the pride of South Australia
The mighty Adelaide Crows
Mumble mumble hum
More out of tune humming
Even MORE out of tune humming
Mumble mumble mumble
We’re the pride of South Australia
We’re the mighty Adelaide Crows.

Apparently our version didn’t quite make the grade, not sure what the problem was. Anyway the following team took pity on us and let us join in on their singing of the club song, we still used the above lyrics, but their excellent voice drowned us out.

This was the last challenge, filling a large plastic ball of air and Aaron then get Aaron to crawl the length of a lap pool and back. Most teams eased themselves into the water gracefully and started to crawl along, not Aaron. He got to the waters edge and threw himself in to the water, the forward momentum got the ball halfway down the pool.

With the last challenge completed we were then on our way to the Highway Inn for presentations. This we knew right from the start so we could organise family and friends to meet us there. Team Wombats got a mention for most support and number of donations, we didn’t have the highest number of points for completing the tasks, nor did we raise the most funds. But we did have fun and we raised $4,500 towards the $130k raised in total.We will definitely do it again next year.

1 week to go – The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race – Day 1