2014 Charity Day

The 2014 Monster Charity day was held Sunday 5th January at the Heads Hotel overlooking the Shoalhaven river  with sunny conditions and a light north easterly breeze to keep everyone cool.  All our charities were there on the day, The Heads Volunteer Rural Fire Service, the Heads Surf Life Saving Club, Volunteer Marine Rescue and Apex the Shak, their members all helping out by selling seafood tray tickets for our raffles and informing the public on how important it is to have these volunteers to keep our beaches safe, our homes safe from fires and our fisherman safe at sea and on the river.  The Apex volunteers were kept busy all day in the BBQ area cooking lunch  for all the guests , with member for Kiama Gareth Ward in there doing his bit for charity .  Adam Straney from Wave FM breakfast show was our MC for the day and our auctioneer, and he definitely kept the crowd amused with his antics, a big thank you to Adam and his family for helping out on the day. Music was supplied by Woody and Ricky Lynch who played in between our charity auction. A big thank you to all those companies and individuals that donated items for our auction , the day just would not go ahead without those generous donations. The monster amusement rides were supplied by ACE Amusements and they donated $300 towards our charity day, well done!.  The Great Moscow circus was in town for the day , setting up their huge blow up clown and the real clowns arrived in their special clown mobiles,  they were also so kind to donate 5 family passes to the Great Moscow Circus in Nowra, and take all the young kids and their parents that were staying at the SHAK (respite facility for kids with cancer ) to their show in Nowra as their special guests. That was so kind of them to do that many thanks to Greg Hall and his team.

Shoalhaven heads local James Hyland decided to shave his beard off for charity on the day and walked around the crowd with a bucket a collected $883.70 for our charities , well done mate!. The volunteer marine rescue had their rescue vessel out at the heads and took children and their parents on rides up the river all day, at one stage the parents were getting a bit worried that they had been gone a little long, but they had a call out that a boat was sinking and had to attend and tow them safely to the ramp , so the kids got see first hand how and what the VMR do in a real life rescue. The Heads Pre School ran the kiddies corner with games, face painting, cup cake making and give aways , they raised $737 for their school, great work . The crowd of locals and visitors ( which I estimated to be over 1000 ) on the day kept the bar staff busy all day and were well behaved with no incidents at all on the day , a big thank you to all who attended and put their hands in their pockets to donate.

The winners of the major raffle drawn at 5pm where :=

”    Shoalhaven heads local Chris Whyte, who won the first prize of the 4.2m Brooker Boat,

”    2nd prize of two person kayak with electric motor , Anthony Scicluna from Currarrong,

”    3rd prize , six burner BBQ was won by Katrina from Culburra,

”    4th prize went to Jim Mountney from Sydney of a keg of beer and $200 worth of meat the party pack ,

Congratulations to all the winners.

A great day was had by all and I must thank all the members of the Heads Hotel Fishos for volunteering their services on the day and in the months leading up to the event, also Heads Hotel manager David Bolt, Secretary Michelle Nellistien and hotel owner Collin Waller for their assistance in running this event that seems to get bigger each year,.

Over $20,000 dollars was raised for our charities so a great job done by the people of the Shoalhaven and visitors to the coast.

Hope to see even more at next years event.

Heads Hotel Fishing Club