Riding across Victoria to connect with mainstream and veteran organisations, our nine Tour de V Centre riders and our support crew achieved their goals and arrived safely at their destination.
The V Centre Veteran Empowerment Program has been open for 22 months and in that time, over 40 veterans have participated in this unique initiative, combining a safe place to live with an individually-tailored support program.
The objective of the Tour de V Centre was to ensure that those outside of metropolitan Melbourne were equally aware of this new service. The launch event was held at SW Tafe in Warrnambool, with dinners at Ararat RSL Sub-branch, Ballarat RSL Sub-branch, Geelong RSL Sub-branch and Box Hill RSL Sub-branch.
Nine riders set off from Warrnambool on Day 1 and nine riders arrived at Box Hill on Day 4. The riders were:
0 From Ballarat: Toby McIntosh, Steve Linane and Alan Hamilton
0 Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Michael Harper
0 Rochelle Maile, one of the riders behind the Nancy Wake Memorial Ride, honouring the courageous WWII resistance fighter and Special Operations Executive
0 From SW Tafe at Warrnambool, John Flett
0 From VetRide, Peter Radford
0 From Asset Connecting Communities, Adam Kent
0 and from Vasey RSL Care, Executive General Manager, Chris Gray.
Ride Director was Bernie Simmons – big shout out to Bernie for keeping everyone safe.
The support team were: drivers/preparation Alison Gray, Sue Brennan, Steve Gilmour and Lindsay Burke; media was managed by Heidi Flower, and photography by James Mepham from Rakali.
Each night over dinner, we had inspiring speakers: Liz Wheeler, Paul Watkins, Dean Mighell, Ken Tsirigotis, Matti Stokes, Corinne Eccles, Kahlil Fegan DSC AM, Sian Diddams and Kevin Sheedy!
Thank you Nestle and Uncle Toby’s for providing snacks and Defence Health for water bottles.
To the sponsors who provided financial and in-kind support, thank you – we could not have done this without you having faith in us.
The riders were incredibly lucky with the weather, especially given the spring we’ve had, with perfect weather right up until an hour out of Box Hill and a head wind on the last day making it particularly tough.
Congratulations to all the riders for making it through to the end and to everyone who came along to the dinners and got to know more about the services available to veterans, especially the V Centre Veteran Empowerment Program.
