The assembled teams, include the medics, AA and RNZAF, all line up for breakfast on New Plymouth's waterfront. Photo / Jacqui Madelin
The assembled teams, include the medics, AA and RNZAF, all line up for breakfast on New Plymouth's waterfront. Photo / Jacqui Madelin
Day one of the 25th Variety Trillian Bash, and the teams lined up outside the East End Surf club, New Plymouth, for breakfast and the first presentations.
Marfell kindergarten received a change station, and a young boy with Aspergers and kidney failure will have a cheque for computer equipment deliveredto his hospital bedside by New Plymouth mayor, Andrew Judd.
Meanwhile 18-year-old Sydnie Maxwell used her new electric scooter for a couple of laps of the hall before joining Suzy Cato and other Bashers outside, where she challenged Tauranga's Mark Hellyer from the Every Little Boys Dream team to a drag race.
Nigel Williams, John Connell, Barry Evans and Andy Neville, Penelope Pitstop front left Maree Maxwell and her daughter, 18-year-old Syndie, with the electric trike donated by Variety and New Plymouth North Rotary club.
Her mum, Maree, says the fold-up scooter has made a huge difference, it's easier to manage than a wheelchair and better suits teenage activities.
The NZ Herald joined the Seuss Subbus for leg one, to lunch at Normanby. The Subbus - a double-ended 1958 Bedford Bus - and its crew are from Ohakune, the small town raising thousands each year for Variety - The Children's Charity thanks to help from the local Desert Defenders Off Road Club, SPI, and a long list of other local businesses.
Ohakune Seuss Subbus and the 'Vege' crew brave a strong Taranaki wind. Photo / Jacqui Madelin
The regular crew dresses up as Seuss characters for school visits - today they were in mufti, their bright-yellow overalls almost subtle inside the equally brightly-painted bus with its roof-top viewing platform.
Team captain Kandy Mott says, "Every time we meet the recipient of a grant we are touched by the courage and love, hard work and determination exhibited by these children and their families or caregivers, and that's what keeps us fund-raising all year."
Suzy Cato aka Penelope Pitstop. Or one of them... Thunderbirds are go! Photo / Jacqui Madelin
The afternoon was spent following a rainy route aboard the Blues Brothers 1989 Ford Fairmong stretch Limo, seven metres long says Mark Barden, from Instyle Gates - one sponsor helping to raise funds for the charity - and through Eltham and Wanganui to Bulls, where the crews will spend the night at Ohakea, home to the RNZAF service crews that keep these temperamental classics going.
