Last week we said “It’s not often that a review of Saturday parkrun starts with Friday activities” however, that is precisely what is needed for our parkrun Australia pilgrimage.

It was a few weeks into our trip that Rory realised that his parkrun anniversary fell on the same day as parkrun Australia as both had started their journey on 2^nd April 2011. However, we were already committed to Marriott Waters on the anniversary so we juggled the schedule and arranged to do our pilgrimage a couple of weeks later.

Having arrived at our hotel, early enough, on the Friday afternoon we took a quick stroll to the event location to ensure we knew exactly where we were going the following day. Using google maps, we roughly identified where the start was and made our way back to the hotel.  As we were now facing the other direction, it was very obvious we were in the right place!

For the first time this holiday we had a Saturday sleep in as the alarms were set for 05:45. For the second consecutive week though, the tracksuit bottoms had to come out of the suitcase! We arrived at about 06:30 and were totally blown away by the incredibly warm and uplifting reception we received. 

The usual selfie frame pictures were taken.

Rory’s yellow v1000 tee was getting more than it’s usual amount of attention and the back of his head (the better side) was photographed many times. The greater attention was probably a result of Main Beach being the original Australian parkrun and it’s participants being a bit more aware of the history of parkrun. This was very evident as Hilarys v500 blue tee also got a lot of attention.

Hilary was on timekeeper duties and Rory was scanning.

The course is essentially an out and back so we had plenty of time to chat with our fellow finish funnel volunteers, before proper work started. Amongst the volunteers was the highly infectious Keiko Sunaba as Funnel Manager, in my 14 years of parkrunning I don’t think I have seen somebody who is so enthusiastic and happy, a hard task to achieve on the back of no sleep due to returning from the London Marathon. Every parkrun needs a Keiko.

After post event close down we walked/rolled to The Sunset Bar and Grill for this weeks post event parkfaffing. Although not the regular place for this (usual place still recovering from Tropical Cyclone Alfred) plenty of participants and volunteers were there for the standard third segment of parkrun.

There was also a very flattering post by the event on it’s Facebook page.

And the remainder of the pictures