Outdoor Industry Connect & Share Forums
Outdoor Industry Connect & Share Forums
Resilience and Charity: A 1,000-Kilometre Expedition
Curious about how the outdoor industry can partner with the Department of Defence or what it takes to roller ski from Brisbane to Sydney? Join us on the 30th episode, of season 2, of Connect and Share as we discuss these intriguing topics and more with Lori Modde, CEO of Outdoors NSW and ACT. We'll explore the latest opportunities for outdoor providers, delve into the AAAS review project, and get the inside scoop on the upcoming Backcountry Summit. You'll also hear about the recent Victorian Backcountry Festival, which, despite challenging weather, managed to impress attendees with its impactful presentations and thoughtful discussions on snow guidance.
We have an inspiring segment featuring ultra-endurance athlete Rochelle, who shares her remarkable journey and the launch of the Sisters on Skates project. This ambitious 1,000-kilometre roller skiing expedition aims to raise $100,000 for three women's charities. Rochelle talks about the logistics, the motivation behind skiking, and how resilience and community engagement drive her mission. Tune in to uncover how personal challenges can fuel social change and learn about the vital events shaping the future of outdoor education.
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Morning everyone. Welcome to another Connect and Share on a Friday morning and it is the 6th of September. My goodness, spring has hit us and it's episode number 30. You're, with Laurie Mote, the CEO of Outdoors NSW and ACT, here to bring you all the industry news, and today we have a guest speaker to join us as well. But first, before we kick off, I'd love to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands in which we all come from today, and I come from Dharug country here in northwest Sydney. They say Wurrumi, which is the aboriginal language for welcome, and I just love watching what we're doing in this space and connecting more with country, and it really does resonate with what we stand for as outdoor people in understanding what country can do for us but how we can put back into country, which is an amazing philosophy. Anyway, let's kick off into all of the news of the week, and here is your 30 second warning for anyone that wants to jump in and tell us a thought of the week. Is there something that you have heard, seen or other that you'd like to share with your colleagues here at the Connect and Share? Then we'll jump into our industry news and we do have a guest speaker with us today who's going to give us an insight into something you may not know too much about. So we'll get to Rochelle very, very soon, but let's kick off and go into the thought of the week. Here is your lovely silence period where, if anyone does have a thought that they'd love to contribute, jump in and tell us now of you. Jump in and tell us now. Nothing coming out from today. That is perfectly fine, because I've got one for you, and it is the fact that you might have seen for the members online and watching the recording, you would have got an email yesterday.
Speaker 2:We've been talking to the Department of Defence for some time now about the commonalities that exist between the outdoor industry and themselves and working alongside of each other and working out the AAAS and how that adapts to the Department of Defence as well, which is great that we're having that connection. But they also alluded to this opportunity, and it hit the airwaves yesterday. So if you are outdoor provider, this is for you. This is an opportunity to work with the Department of Defence, putting yourselves on a panel of potential contractors to deliver their adventure training. Now. This is something that they've done in-house in previous years and now they're bringing it to the industry for us to assist them with this activity. So there is three areas there's the roping area, the water area and the last one, the alpine area. Now in each of those areas they're looking for specific activities.
Speaker 2:The details are on the AusTender website. So you must log in and if you are not a member, you can certainly register for free to get access to these documents. So jump onto AusTender and look up item number 49923 to give you all the details that are currently available. Now that is just a brief bit of information, because what happens is on the 3rd of October sorry, 4th of October they're going to release the full paperwork for you to look through. That will be then closing on the 20th of December. So you'll have pretty much October, november and part of December to pull your content together and apply for this contract. Now it will start in July next year, so it will basically be effective from that point.
Speaker 2:So think about what you can do to provide the services to the Department of Defence, to the Department of Defence, and, yeah, really exciting for the industry in seeing this shift and working a lot closer with the Department of Defence. Now back to the AAAS, and you might have noticed, there is now a project lead role being advertised for the AAAS review. This job advert is on our website, as well as OCA's website, the Outdoor Council of Australia's website, the outdoor council of australia's website, so please have a look at it if you're interested in applying for that. And a reminder that that closes on the 24th of september. A huge thank you to dave and kyle for holding the fort at the backcountry festival. Dave, I don't know if you've got good signal there, but have you got some insights in what happened at the Victorian Backcountry Festival?
Speaker 3:Yes, no, that was.
Speaker 3:The Backcountry Festival went ahead regardless of the fact that we had huge severe weather, and the festival tours, the adventure tours, were done on some of the resort areas that were closed because of lift hold anyway, yeah, so, so it was quite a successful festival.
Speaker 3:Uh, there we ended up with less doing less outdoor things and more presentations. So, uh, yeah, so that was quite good, and one of the presentations was on the uh, on the draft, uh discussion paper um for snow guidance note in the future, and that was presented by kyle, who came down from new south wales, and myself and that was really well received and a lot of people spoke to us over the time there that I was there for the whole three days and people that weren't actually running commercial or group activities started to realise that they had something to contribute. In other words, yeah, to contribute to the document. If you're a snow person, you might have some good ideas about what is actually safe with a group, even if you weren't specifically taking groups out. So I think, all in all, the festival was very, very successful and the presentation and the feedback we got on the draft was good.
Speaker 2:Amazing. That's great and thank you again for your time and effort of delivering that for us, and great to hear that it's been well received, because this all culminates into our own Backcountry Summit, which will be on the 16th of October. So hopefully we'll get some interest in people coming along to discuss some of the things that they'd probably like to see in that discussion paper or may want a little bit of alteration. So certainly you can register, it's free to be part of it. We encourage everyone that does anything in the Alpine regions to come along and be part of that conversation. Our AGM is coming up and it's the 1st of October. It will be held online and, as you would have seen this morning, you would have got a notice about that AGM, its agenda and certainly some of the things that we'll be looking at voting on at that AGM. That includes some slight changes to our constitution to fix up. After two years of operating under the constitution, we've found some anomalies, which always happens with such a big document, and we want to fine-tune that to make sure it is well governed and is the tool that we need it to be going forward. So all of that information is in your email and, yes, just waiting on the final person who's coming along from SafeWork, but it's great to see that SafeWork will be our guest speaker at our AGM to help us understand what they have seen in the last 12 months in relation to our activities and some of the reminders or things that they think that we need to look at in the next 12 months ahead. So, yeah, look forward to seeing all our members at the AGM online on the 1st of October. Don't forget to register to get the details.
Speaker 2:And Tidbinbilla National Park in Canberra in the ACT is under review. The plan of management is under review. So if you operate in Tidbinbilla, it's really important that you have a look at the plan of management and see if there's anything you want changed, anything that might be obstructing activity, reducing access, anything that you think I need to know to certainly help those conversations, because we'll be working closely with ACT Parks on that review. So let me know if there's anything that stands out that review. So let me know if there's anything that stands out now if you are in the business where you want to get more involved in tourism and in that actual fact, international tourism, so this is getting international visitors into your activities. Now in terminology of tourism speak, it's called inbound. So we have inbound strategy workshops which are to assist operators in getting equipped with what they need to know to be an inbound operator. Now, back in the days when I started in tourism, it was a bit of a whirlwind of understanding how the inbound market works, and if you're not familiar with it, it is quite complex. So it's really good if you can jump on to any of these workshops. I will be attending the one in Western Sydney on Thursday, the 12th of September, but they are being held in Blue Mountains and Sydney as well, and there is also one online. So if you're out of the Greater Sydney area and you want to be involved, you can jump onto the online workshop and that is available on the Destination NSW website. So, yeah, hopefully you can come along and understand how you can be part of a larger tourism opportunity.
Speaker 2:Now the Mountain Bike Symposium is coming up. It's the 25th and 26th of October. I think I saw on the counter there that we're down to 49 days until that event, or 48, and our early bird rates do close next week early next week. So if you haven't got your tickets yet, please jump in and grab those. The final program will be released next week with all the details of what you will be hearing and being part of as that symposium takes place. So we also do have another workshop which we've added on to the symposium on the day prior. So we do have a cocktail party on the Thursday night, which is the kickoff of the symposium.
Speaker 2:Thursday afternoon, just before that cocktail party, we're hosting Natalie Bramble. She's an award-winning author as well as a grant guru, so for any people that want to apply for more grants and be more successful, you cannot miss this opportunity. Natalie has basically decoded the system to getting better efficiencies with your grant applications and she has been absolutely delighted to come along and present this workshop to all the attendees of the Mountain Bike Symposium and anyone else that doesn't want to attend the symposium but her workshop as singly. So join us. You can scan that QR code there and register online. And a huge thank you to our sponsors. Who makes these things possible? It really does make these things come to life with this support and Destination. Nsw have been a huge supporter of regional events, and how great that we're all going to a beautiful town like Marimbula to have an event of this nature. And a huge thanks to Blue Sky Trails, affinity Insurance Brokers. And of course, you'll also see the exhibition area, where you'll have people like AFS Group and Five Star Training there as well. Amanda Rose is our emcee and we'll certainly be trying to hurt the cats as we come through all the discussions and issues of the mountain biking community.
Speaker 2:Now a reminder about noic. If you haven't got your tickets for noic yet, uh, good time to jump in and grab them. It's on the 4th to the 6th of december and for those that know that acronym, it's the national outdoor education conference. For those that don't, so, it's being held at Federation University in Gippsland in Victoria, and for those out-of-staters like most of us here, there is an option of a shuttle from the airport and on-site accommodation. So have a look at Outdoors Victoria website for all the details.
Speaker 2:And here's just a sneak peek about next year's dates 9 to 11 July and 26 to 28 September. So we have the summit, the outdoor summit, which we hold every two years on the 9th to the 11th of July, and we have our outdoor learning mini conference being held on the 26th to the 28th of September. Now, both of these events, I'm going to call 2025 as the year of Canberra, because both of them are going to be held in Canberra next year, so delighted to bring a lot of opportunities to the ACT and hopefully we'll see all of our members across the country who want to come along. Now I'm going to hand over to the amazing Rochelle, who's going to tell us a little bit about these images and what she is up to. So I'm going to stop sharing. She's going to share her slides now and I'll hand over to you, rochelle.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I don't know about the amazing bit, but I'll do my best to live up to that billing. Just let me share my screen. Just give me one second to do that looking fabulous okay.
Speaker 1:So thank you everybody, um and Laurie in particular, for the opportunity to sit in on your meeting today, and I'd just like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you today from Wiradjuri country in southern New South Wales ultra endurance athlete, and I'm here today just to talk briefly to you about a project that I'm involved in that will take place in April 2025. But just as a little bit of context and I'm sure that I don't need to spend much time on this because I'm probably preaching to the converted but, as an ultra endurance athlete, the perpetual question that I get asked is why we do what we do in terms of the pain, the suffering, the mental torture, all the training and preparation, the risk, and a lot of people are very curious, I suppose, about why, and I'm sure many of you like me this week have been glued to the Paralympics and that wonderful feast of elite sport coming out of Paris, and I think Ellie Cole, who's pictured here in the centre of this slide, a former Australian Paralympic swimmer she really gave the perfect answer when she was asked you know why Paralympians do what they do, why they undertake seemingly impossible feats, such as competing in archery when you have no upper limbs or competing in butterfly in swimming, when, when again, you have shortened or malformed limbs. And she simply said we do it to find out who we are. And I think that that's the perfect answer for any ultra endurance athlete or adventurer to give you know when somebody asks why it is you do what you do. You know, we do it to test the depths of our resilience. We do it to test our ability to find creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. And I thought it was just such a wonderful answer. It really struck a chord with me and I think it's going to be a soundbite that I put away for the future.
Speaker 1:So that's sort of, I suppose, half of the reason why many ultra-injurious athletes do what they do. I think the other half is often driven not so much by those intrinsic factors but more of an extrinsic desire to do something for others. And I've included two pictures here of friends of mine who are also adventurous. One is Dave Cornthwaite, who skateboarded across Australia from Perth to Brisbane a couple of years ago, and the other is Steph Gebbie, who single-handedly rode her two horses across Australia from Victoria to Western Australia, both of whom did those as charity endeavours, you know, and often that is a real driving factor in what we do is we want to be a voice for people who don't necessarily have a voice for themselves and to draw attention to social issues that we really think need highlighting. And ironically, today of all days, the Prime Minister is actually under a great deal of public pressure to explain why the money that he promised for domestic violence prevention has not been appropriately used or enacted, and that particular issue is one that's driving the project that I'm about to talk to you today.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, I'd just like to give you a brief rundown on the Sisters on Skates project. So Sisters on Skates will involve a team of women who will be roller skiing from Brisbane to Sydney in April next year so it's a thousand kilometres and aiming to raise $100,000 for three different women's charities. So, as I said, this is just a little introduction to me. I started out as an ultramarathon runner, competing in events up to 200 kilometres, but I'm also a horse trainer by profession and I've also completed a number of ultra distance horse treks with my lovely team of horses. I've also completed adventures by rowboat, rowing the length of the Murray River in my little 10 foot dinghy, and you can see a picture there of my newest endeavor, which is roller skiing, which I took up 12 months ago when I smashed up my knee trail running and wasn't able to run. So I took it up as a form of cross training, got completely obsessed with it and got involved with the Sisters on Skates project. So, as I said, the project involves a 1000 kilometre trip by roller ski from Brisbane south to Sydney. We'll be kicking off on or about April, the 20th next year, and skiing over a three-week period and aiming to raise $100,000 for the three charities which are listed here.
Speaker 1:Small Steps for Hannah is located in Brisbane, which is where we're going to kick off, and some of you may remember the tragic story of Hannah Clark who, with her three young children, was trapped in a vehicle by her ex-partner, who then set the vehicle alight and unfortunately, neither Hannah nor her children survived that attack.
Speaker 1:So Hannah's charity was established by her family and we will be commencing our skate from their headquarters in Brisbane. The skate will conclude in Redfern in Sydney at the Women and Girls Emergency Centre, and once again they are a charity who provide emergency accommodation and support for women and girls escaping domestic violence situations. And our final charity is Share the Dignity who have a presence in many towns and cities around the country, providing free sanitary products for women through their pink dispensing machines. And, you know, with the high cost of living in this country at the moment, my understanding is that sanitary products are one of the most shoplifted items from supermarkets because many women and girls can simply not afford to purchase them. So share the dignity of providing, you know, a vital service for women and girls in these expensive times.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:So what is roller skiing? It might be something that people are not that familiar with, so roller skiing is a modality most commonly used by cross-country skiers in the off-season or when there is no snow like this year. So you can see that the ski is about 40 centimetres long, with a wheel front and back and propelled along by regular ski poles. On our particular trip, we will be using a variation of the traditional roller ski, which is called a skike, and skikes are very popular as a form of recreation in Europe and hopefully may become so in Australia one day as well. They are a little different to the roller ski for three different reasons.
Speaker 1:Number one, and probably most importantly, they have brakes. So traditional roller skis do not have brakes, and that makes the skill element required to use the ski that much higher, whereas with a Skyke it's much safer to use because it does have a rear wheel brake that can help you maintain control. Secondly, the Skyke doesn't require ski boots or bindings. It can be used just with a regular running shoe. And the Skyke also has pneumatic tires rather than hard rubber tires, so it gives you a much better ride across the ground, especially on a long journey like ours, and also it enables the ski to travel across gravel, dirt grass as well as just on asphalt, so it's a much more versatile modality than a regular roller ski. So I'm just going to give you a little look at how a Skype looks when it actually is travelling.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you, you back you so hands up.
Speaker 1:If you don't think that looks like the most fun thing in the entire world, it is. I have to say it is the most fun thing in the entire world and it's not a difficult skill to learn. I mean, if I can learn how to do it, then anybody can.
Speaker 2:It does look fun. It looks absolutely fun. Dago, I can see your knees.
Speaker 1:But I think also, you know, one reason that we chose Sky King as the modality for this particular charity effort is that we were originally just going to run it and the run has been done many times before. And, you know, in these days of difficult economic times and trying to raise funds for charity, we felt we needed something slightly more novel, perhaps to attract public attention. So if you can imagine a group of women in pink on skikes travelling down the Pacific Highway, you know, hopefully that will be a bit of a, you know public attention forgetter and a really good way, I think, to draw attention to the cause that we're supporting.
Speaker 1:So I know personally, you know I live in a very small town out in the Riverina, and whenever I'm out training, people stop all the time to ask me what the heck that I'm doing, and they're very curious about skyking, and I think that it really is a great way for us to really be able to draw as much public attention as we can. And so at this stage the aim is to have a team of around four women. We've got three at the moment, but we're certainly open to having more people than that. So, you know, if there is interest out there, people certainly don't have to be established cross-country skiers to join the team. If you're an endurance athlete or you feel you have a good level of fitness and you would like to acquire the skills to be able to travel on skis, you know, the more women that we can get involved even if people don't do the whole trip, doing part of the trip, really putting the profile of women out there, showing our resilience, showing our fitness and showing our commitment to this cause, you know we're very welcome to having more people join us. We're still looking for crew, so you know, we need a support car that will travel behind the team at all times, car that will travel behind the team at all times. Or if people have sort of more off-field skills in terms of dealing with the media and sponsors, got multimedia skills, film and video, or skills in fundraising, you know, any kind of support like that would be very welcome.
Speaker 1:So, as I said, this is the route. It's basically straight south from brisbane. We'll be skating about 50 to 60 kilometres a day and a skyke travels on average about 10 kilometres an hour. So you know we're spending a fair bit of time on our feet, but there will also be time devoted to visiting schools and community organisations on the way and, as I said, be supported by a crew the whole time. You know, obviously risk management is a thing with a project like this, particularly travelling the route that we're travelling. It's one of the most busy transport thoroughfares in the country, again chosen for that reason. You can see this is a picture of Dave Cornthwaite on his skateboard crossing Australia and Dave, I have to say he has been really supportive of our project and really helped with the planning and risk management processes based on his own experiences.
Speaker 1:So there will be a support vehicle travelling behind the skating team at all times, and the skating team will remain together at all times as well, so nobody will be breaking away and skating on their own. We'll remain as a group and skate to the pace of the slowest person. We'll also be liaising with local transport management authorities, police and councils to make sure we have permits to travel in all the areas that we will be in, particularly because we do have to skate across things like the sydney Bridge to get to Redfern. We'll also be releasing media alerts in all the areas that we're in, again just hoping to raise public awareness that we are in the area for our own safety as much as our own fundraising efforts. We'll be wearing full safety attire, so pads, helmets, gloves and high-vis vests. Everyone will be expected to achieve a base level of fitness that will allow them to skate 50 or 60 kilometres a day to avoid injury in that time.
Speaker 1:And just something I briefly wanted to touch on that Dave put a big emphasis on in planning and management of an expedition like this, which is team cohesion and careful selection of team members, because three weeks on the road when you've got people under extreme fatigue can really bring out the worst and the best in some people, and he said that that is the thing that is the most likely to bring an expedition undone, rather than fitness or equipment breakdowns.
Speaker 1:It's more likely because the team falls apart rather than anything else. So that's again a factor that we certainly take into account when bringing people into the expedition is to make sure that everyone's a good fit. So, just finally, where we're at now is, as I said, we're continuing to recruit crew and skaters, making sure that everyone's training. We're already fundraising to pay for the cost of the expedition, which is estimated to be in the vicinity of $20,000. And again starting to use the expedition to both raise the profile of our selected charities and also the profile of roller skiing and skiking as a recreational sport. Amazing, that's about it from me, if we we do have a website, it is down at the moment under repairs, but it will be up again at some stage. But if if you want to contact me, you can contact me through my social media or my email, which is listed there. But thank you so much for having me along, and hopefully everyone wants to go out and put some Skypes on their feet now and go out and hit the pace.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I desperately want to give it a go. Thanks so much, rochelle. That was amazing and what you're doing is incredible. Look, we'll certainly at Outdoors, nsw and ACT, amplify whatever you do and certainly try to get it out into cyberspace for you and try to get a bit more exposure. But can I open up? Anyone got any questions or comments, congratulations or anything else you'd like to share with Rochelle? They're all in amazement. That's the problem, rochelle that's totally fine.
Speaker 1:as I said, if, if there is anything, just shoot me an email or you can find me on social media and, um, yeah, no, thank you again for your time and attention. I think what you guys do is amazing in really promoting the ability of Australians to get out in the outdoors and find out who they are, you know, in activities that might be outside their own comfort zones, and I think that you guys facilitate that in a way that it's safe, it's accessible and it looks incredibly fun and inviting. So, yeah, what you do is fantastic.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have said it better myself Well done, thank you. And that's exactly right. That's exactly what most of our guys do. So thank you so much, michelle, for being with us. We wish you all the very best and, as Liz said there, great cause, um, it's really um, really great to see what you're doing and, as we say, we'll support you in any way we can. Thank you pleasure. Okay, on that note, I'll actually close the recording and we'll have our usual chat. So have a great week, everyone, and we'll see you next week.