July 28, 2015
Can the annual South Burnett Captains Dinner – a key fundraiser for Relay For Life – get any bigger?
Relay For Life patron, Dinner Committee chairman and compere for the night Carl Rackemann said this question was asked every year.
But he admitted this year’s dinner was going to be very, very hard for the organising committee to top in future.
On Saturday night, Kingaroy Town Hall was packed to overflowing by patrons eager for dinner and the chance to meet three genuine sporting superstars: league legend Darren Lockyer, tennis great Evonne Goolagong Cawley and four-time paralympian Brendan Burkett
The trio was introduced and interviewed on stage by South Burnett Mayor Wayne Kratzmann who teased interesting tidbits of information out of each of them …
For example, Evonne only first watched a video of herself playing tennis about three years ago “I didn’t like watching myself”; Brendan’s mates presented him with an eyepatch and a stuffed parrot after he had his leg amputated; and Darren very nearly became an Aussie Rules player (if Hawthorne had called while he was still living in Brisbane, rugby league could have missed out on one if its greatest players).
The night was a triumph for South Burnett residents working together with 14 volunteer “pirates” in purple selling raffle tickets, between 30 and 40 volunteer waiters from Kingaroy and Nanango State high schools serving up meals and taking drinks orders and the Wooroolin Lions flat out behind the bar.
In the kitchen, hospitality students from Kingaroy TAFE worked alongside the team from Cassis on Booie to prepare the three-course meal.
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There was a lot of laughs and jokes, but the main reason for the dinner was never forgotten … cancer, the disease that seems to touch most of our lives in some fashion.
Another of the guest speakers was Dr Wayne Schroder from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.
Dr Schroder is part of a team researching pancreatic cancer and “personalised medicine”, ie treatment that targets the exact tumour.
“Medical research has been allowing really improved outcomes for cancer patients across Australia; but the hard nut to crack is pancreatic cancer,’ Dr Schroder said.
“It is the No 5 killer in Australia from cancer-related causes and modelling suggests it will creep up to No 2 in a decade.
“But there is excellent evidence that pancreatic cancer is the tumor to be focussing on for personalised medicine.
“Personalised medicine is about using biomarkers to tailor the best possible treatment for an individual.
“We need some amazing technology to analyse the tumour very, very quickly. And we need to understand how particular drugs interact with this tumour .”
Earlier this year, the Queensland Cancer Council announced a research grant had been named after South Burnett Relay For Life patron Carl Rackemann and the Sportsman’s Dinner Committee.
This grant has now been directed to support the work of Professor Andreas Suhrbier, Dr Schroder and the rest of the team at the Berghofer MRI.
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After dinner and the guest speakers, the serious business of raising money began.
South Burnett Relay For Life committee president Rowena Dionysius said the local event had come a long way since its first one held 10 years ago – which raised $71,000.
If this year’s Relay can raise $150,000, it will take the total amount of money raised in the South Burnett over the last 10 years past $1 million.
The 2015 Captains Dinner must have made a big dent in this target:
- Silent auction: Black Caviar print $1000, photo with the three captains $1500, two Darren Lockyer bottles of rum $801 each, 2015 Broncos jersey $1800, State of Origin print $650, Big Bash pack $480.
- Main auction (conducted by Dennis Cotter): Air-conditioner (donated by Wondai Electrical Services) $3000; signed Broncos jersey (from year 2000) $3000; artwork donated by Venus Rabbitt $650; signed 2015 State of Origin jersey (donated by Mark Smith) $3700; Brendan Burkett signed swimming cap $1000; air-conditioned suite at the Gabba with Evonne and Roger Cawley $4000 (donated by Qld Cricket); cricket ball signed by Ian Botham, Viv Richards, Shane Warne and Brian Lara $4000; signed cricket bat commemorating 20th anniversary of Qld winning the Sheffield Shield $3000; Evonne Goolagong poster $2100; eight Relay for Life purple cricket balls at $500 each; Wallaby jersey & Springbok jersey & two scarves $550; Fourex “8X” beer can signed by Darren Lockyer $600.
And then there was the 19-prize draw raffle … with thousands of $2 tickets sold.
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