This morning we awake to the impending realisation the Nullabor Plain awaits in a couple of days. Not knowing fully the adventure ahead, we look forward to it nervously. Though we've met every challenge up until now, I say on my teammates behalf, we must deal with the here and now and these thoughts must be put aside... Members of our team fill in their few spare moments in various ways. One of our team strolled down to the oceanfront for some meditative moments ...
... while others sought their meditative moments elsewhere ...
(Dear reader, our report for Boys Team A today is brought to you by Steve, reporting from the back of the van in amongst his multiple other tasks including taking all the photographs, and running a good portion of our kms...)
There is a school presentation this morning at Elliston Area School, inwardly we vow never to disappoint.
Starting at 8:45 we welcome the smiling faces of the children who meet us with anxious excitement at the corner of their school, showing the gratitude and hospitality their town is renowned for.
All 67 students ran in with our team and assembled in the Activities Room for our brief presentation ...
There were plenty of questions and answers ...
... before we all headed across the street to the oval to hold the torch and play the 'continents' game.
At this school, the students themselves represented the continents and held the various continent flags ...
Then it was 'off' for a final 'run around the world' ...
The students were a delicate mixture of awareness and enthusiasm ...
... the perfect start to the horizon of which Prachar takes the first steps, torch in hand and heart.
We're now continuing our run after our joyful visit to our promising new future stars of Elliston. Heading out of town, we detoured via an historic pier ... we then notice our runner, Prachar has become unusually distracted up ahead - and notice he has made a wrong turn. On reading the sign at the start of his detour it all made sense. 'Great Ocean Tourist Drive', sculptures ahead ...
This brief detour proved a major distraction for our team, as we spent over an hour drinking in the beauty, majesty and power of this staggering coastline ...
We are reminded that the Great Australian Bight lies just ahead ...
Perched along the clifftops are a series of fascinating scuptures, which drew our particular interest ...
At the far tip of the point, time to relax another moment ...
... and for Ion to star in a video shoot of this spectacular scene ...
From left: Ben, Andrew and Jed from Western Australia, who had been surfing just out from the cliff face here, in notoriously "rough and sharky waters" – they had just seen a seal in the water while they were surfing which made their hearts race – then noticed it was only a seal ... looking well accustomed to saltwater, they speak of the kindred spirits that share its bountiful expanse feeling truly blessed. They are on a 5-month surfing trip from WA to Noosa in Queensland.
Back to the road: on closing the doors of the van, behind us a silence falls upon all, we quickly become focused on our heart, breath and limbs, our main focal point for the rest of the day ...
Ion from Moldova is our second runner of the morning. I feel his mantra, focus of the day: 'If you point your heart in one direction, your legs will follow to the beyond.'
As I run I think of the runner who will follow me: Grahak Cunningham – even though he has completed and won the world's longest race, the Self-Transcendence 3,100 mile Race ...
... I'm aware that each stride is as important as the last, and I ponder my possibilities ... and become aware after my first 5 km of the day – these possibilities surpass the horizon.
Salil has left the bus next, to the sound of many sheep across sweeping plains, you might even feel insignificant in its depth, though on the Peace Run you are aware that is furthest from the truth ...
I wonder whether Salil knows his own depth ... Maybe we will never know entirely till the end ...
The times you run and feel it is most difficult, is when you make the most progress.
Some many kilometres ahead, we meet Jonny and Jess ...
... they are travelling around Australia, working their way now from Western Australia back towards their home in Lake Macquarie, NSW. Curiosity led them to a pot of gold otherwise known as the Peace Run van ...
... they tell us they operate a positive living network called Rebel on a Rainbow.
Nice folk, too!
Shortly thereafter running we arrive at a street sign reading "Talia Caves"
This is where our Girls Team has earlier started running, and according to their instructions, where we should cease, for now ...
... winding the clock back to this morning, Stacey takes up the narrative ...
Our girls team was the first to set off today, to give us enough time to get our kms in for the day and still be able to do a big shop... we are about to hit the Nullarbor Plain. Only one of our team has run this before, so we were given a briefing of what to expect – not much. This meant we divided up the cooking shifts for the next week, with each of our 'cooks' giving our team a list of what they will need to make their meals. Our vans will be ladened with food as we take our slow and gradual footsteps over this vast plain.
As our team departed there was a downpour of rain, we all thought it would be another day of running in the rain ... but it soon stopped and a beautiful double rainbow appeared and seemed to come straight to our Campervan. We pulled to the side of the road to take some photos and felt we could just about touch the ends of the rainbow. It seems Mother Nature wanted to bless us on our journey today and gave just enough rain to bring us the rainbow.
Our biggest obstacle on the road today were the kangaroos: maybe they haven't seen too many cars, or maybe they wanted us to stop and say hi. As they do take a little time to realise that cars travelling along the road they are standing on, will in fact hit them if they do not move. Some friendly tooting of the Campervan assisted them (still somewhat slowly) to kindly move to the side.
As we entered into Port Kenny we were greeted at the Service Station by some of the students from Port Kenny School. They ran us the last 1km into their school. They were such a great bunch of students all passing the torch and running as a team.
As we assembled at the front of the School ready to go in, one of the teachers commented about how much traffic they had on the road today – she had to pull over three times to let a car past. We were informed that in Port Kenny they don't normally get traffic and the three cars that passed us on the 1km into the school was really really a lot!
Port Kenny has 62 residents and there are 19 students who go to the school, and you could really feel the family feeling there, as we often do in the smaller towns we visit on our route.
As we unravelled the banner the students were so happy to see the founder of the Run on the Banner – the school had been learning about the Peace Run and its founder, Sri Chinmoy, and the students couldn't figure out what nationality the founder was. Once they saw the picture on the banner they were able to guess he was from India.
They had all written their 'Pledges of Peace' that they read out to us. It is always wonderful to hear the students' pledges, knowing that each one of these pledges is coming from their hearts. Some of the pledges we received today were:
'Ella and Liz promise to care for others and help people when ever they need it. We will always be honest and never lie.'
'Matthew and Jordan promise to work things out if we both have an argument, to be honest, trustworthy and respectful to other people and always be friends between us and Connor.'
'Spread Peace
Everlasting friendship and love is important.
Agreement is needed for peace.
Caring for people and countires.
Enemies are bad, work out why they're your enemy and make peace.
By Zoe and Amber'
We all went outside afterwards to hold the torch and answer some of the many questions that they had.
The teachers at Port Kenny School had organised a morning tea for us – as we had already run a few kms to get to the school we were able to sit with them over morning tea and talk to them some more about the Peace Run and also learn more about Port Kenny and Streaky Bay. They also very kindly offered advised on where to do our next shop when we get into Ceduna and wished us well on our Run into Western Australia.
And we were off!
Only about another 35kms for us today ...
... as we continued on our way we started to notice the increase in the 'friendly' Australian flies. There was only so much we could do to stop them landing on us ... so we tried to get a bit creative with what we had in our Camper and wiped Eucalyptus oil all over our skin. For future reference to our fellow travellers this does not do anything apart from make the Campervan smell great!
We are constantly finding novel ways of communication – the gravel on the side of the road is a fantastic way of writing things down.
We finished our kms today with lots of daylight left, so for the first time we decided to stop and have lunch. Finding ourselves close to Streaky Bay we couldn't resist taking our Mongoligan friends down to the ocean for lunch.
We meet some of the locals there – one man who we talked with worked for the schools in South Australia. So he knew all of the schools and principals in the area that we have and are going to be seeing. As he travels around a lot he had also saw us in Adelaide on Saturday! He farewelled us and asked a simple request: if we could knock on the door of Penong Primary and say hi from him.
... Thanks for that Stacey, let's get back to Steve and hear what his team have been up to ...
After driving ahead over the distance covered by the girls team, we find that they have left us in absolutely no doubt as to the second starting point for Boys Team A. Never fear, Roads SA, all these stickers were duly removed before we recommenced our running!
With only another 30 km to run for the day, we could afford to relax a little ...
... with some roadside frisbee ...
... with occasional pauses in the game, as we respectfully await for unusual animals to pass across the field of play ...
Closing in on our destination, there remains only the 100 km drive to Ceduna, our resting place for tonight ...
... but wait! What about Boys Team B? How is it we have not seen or heard anything from them and the day is almost over???
Time to rewind our clocks again to the morning and check in with Adrien, another debut report writer...
The sky welcomed us on this new day by a rainbow visible right from the room doorstep (and it has been followed by 2 more some time later this morning). A hopeful sight for the five runners of the team A who were expected to do quite a big mileage today: 90km.
With a very light spirit, Team A started its journey towards what would become a day of peace and self-transcendence along the roads of the vast Australia. We were to only run today – all the distance not covered by the other teams who were spending time in schools.
Two of the runners began the day with a 7km run to warm up, followed shortly afterwards by another run of 10km!
Running, I will never give up, for peace I will always stand up!
No stops in town today, only the peace filled atmosphere of the lands, a few greetings from our cousins the sheeps and birds and the goal ahead of us.
Bayarkhuu constantly inspires us with his stretching routines ...
... to stretch our own limits!
We were greeted on the way by a few fellows in a ute who showed interest in the run and where happy to offer us a donation. Thank you! We were also greeted by two other well wishers who enjoyed to hear about our journey.
By the end of the day, 3 of our team runners had accomplished 20km each!
We arrived in Ceduna and were warmly greeted by Gary, owner of the Ceduna Motor Inn, and his daughter Lucia, who showed a great interest for this action of peace.
Lucia proved to be a keen and promising runner!
Having covered our distance in good time, we had the opportunity to head down to the waterfront for some well-earned relaxation ...
As we pulled into our accommodation for the evening we meet Craig, who has been cycling from Perth and just crossed the Nullabor. As there were not many food stops on the way, he has been hanging out for fresh food! By luck our team was cooking dinner tonight and easily added another person to the numbers. Craig is going to bike all the way to Darwin in the opposite direction to us so we hope to see him again on our travels.
A big thank you to Mark from A1 Cabins and Caravan Park for hosting our girls team and half of our boys team this evening.
