Our Story

Where it started - Peter Herrick

In 2019, friends of mine, Mark Maddocks and Rachael Fitzgerald lost their little girl, Lara, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Lara Maddocks was very close in age to my daughter, and this hit home. The idea of losing a loved one is horrible, however to the thought of losing a child still wakes me up at night. The only option was to do something to support others that were experiencing the same grief as Mark and Rachael.

In 2021, a group of Mark and Rachael’s friends walked from London to Manchester, over 300km raising money for the Lullaby Trust in the UK. A small team of family and friends here in Australia, decided to walk the short 25km from Geelong to Lara to raise funds also for the Lullaby Trust, in which we raised just over $1000.

Even though the effort was tremendous in 2021, we wanted to go larger in 2022 and support an Australian charity, and Red Nose was selected. We also wanted to challenge ourselves and set a more challenging event, which was to ride over 100kms around the Bellarine Peninsula. The goal was to raise $5000, which I felt was more than achievable.

We had 10 riders complete the ride in 2022, and with the support of our major sponsors, we were able to raise $26,514 for Red Nose.

In 2023, we hope to go larger again, with more riders, and a greater amount of donations heading towards Red Nose. We really believe the work Red Nose do to support grieving families, as well as support the education programs of new parents to develop safe sleeping habits, so it would be amazing for the community to get behind us and join us on the ride and donate.