Month: April 2013

Source: IllawarraMercury

Michael Wilkins. Picture: SYLVIA LIBER

The second time around of a life-changing experience is never the same as the first time.

Some things are easier, some things are harder.

For Michael Wilkins, now in the final preparations for his second time riding around Australia on a motorbike, he’s already noticed that money is much tighter this time.

On his first trip, in 2010, he raised more than $8000 for the Steven Walter Children’s Cancer Foundation.

This time, he’s struggling to raise $5000.

“Some of the businesses that supported me on the first ride have said they can’t do it now,” he said.

“I have written to businesses concerned with motorcycling and the community and I haven’t even received a reply. Not even a ‘no’.

“A lot of people wonder why they should give me money to go on a fantastic ride.

“I stress that none of the donated funds goes towards my costs, which will be in the order of about $8500 in accommodation, food and petrol.”

Wilkins’s motivation to set off on a trip to Townsville, west to Tennant Creek and Katharine via Mount Isa, through the Kimberley and back across the Nullarbor Desert, is not just to have a good time.

He first came across the Steven Walter Children’s Cancer Foundation while riding on the famous Snowy Ride, an annual event attracting around 3000 riders that has raised more than $3 million for childhood cancer research.

Walter was only 19 when he died in July 2000 after an eight-year fight against cancer.

His whole life revolved around motorcycles and he was a former NSW Junior Enduro Champion and an Australian Four Day silver medallist.

“The funds raised by the charity help pay for clinical trials, which are not necessarily funded by government money or drug companies,” Wilkins said.

“They are a small charity with only three employees, so the majority of the money goes to the researchers where it’s meant to go.”

His trip in 2010 was his first around Australia and it had a profound effect on the 63-year-old mechanical designer and self-confessed “born-again motorcyclist” from Bellambi.

“It was difficult readjusting when I returned,” he said.

“In fact, I still haven’t. We all had to face that fact that we had to get back in the harness and work for a living.

“It’s changed a lot of things.”

He wrote a book about the trip, A Lap for the Little Ones, and this time around will be writing a blog for the Mercury when he rides out of the Sydney Children’s Hospital on May 1.

“It is an expensive exercise but I have been able to justify that in my own mind because it is raising money for something that is pretty important, and because I had such a great time,” he said.

“It wasn’t so much the touristy things like the tree walk and the Nullarbor.

“It was more the intangible things – the freedom of being out there.

“There is such a feeling of release from responsibilities, worries, concerns and alarm clocks.

“The feeling of the freedom and the space.

“That’s the thing.”

After growing up in Oberon, where he learned how to ride dirt bikes, Wilkins came to Wollongong at the age of 22 to work at the steelworks.

He rode a bike to work and went out for more adventurous rides at weekends when he could, but time was tight.

Then he took a sales job in the early 1980s that came with a company car, and after keeping the bike unused in a garage for months, he ended up giving it to his daughter.

After many years involved in the Tech Waratahs Rugby Club, including six as president, he came back to motorcycling in his early 50s, when his body was too old for rugby.

Slowly, he met other motorcyclists and started travelling down to Phillip Island with members of the Ducati Club in Sydney.

“Although motorcycle riding is a solitary activity to a certain extent, it’s like anything – if something is worth doing, it’s worth sharing with somebody,” Wilkins said.

“That said, I often get out by myself on the bike and may do a loop down to Ulladulla, but it’s different with a group.”

Although this will be his last time around Australia, it won’t be the end of his work for the foundation, nor the end of his long bike trips.

He’s got the bug.

“There is the vastness and the wonder of it all,” he said.

“There’s the feeling that you are insignificant as an entity.

“The land is the dominating factor out there.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

ALMOST 80,000 Australian children are not immunised against deadly diseases, and the highest number live in Sydney’s west.

Experts say the “baby Einstein” demographic – parents who take an intensive interest in their children’s education and health, eat organic food and use alternative medicines – is responsible.

Sydney’s west has an immunisation rate of 90 per cent for five-year-olds but last financial year was home to 3600 children who were not fully immunised. In wealthy Manly, Mosman and eastern Sydney, however, fewer than 85 per cent of children are immunised in some age groups.The figures are contained in a National Health Performance Authority report.

The World Health Organisation says immunisation rates for measles must be above 93 per cent to prevent its spread. Immunisation expert Julie Leask says parents who perform extensive research and are often suspicious of medicine are more likely to object to vaccination.

“I think what these figures say is … you can’t rely on herd immunity in your region,” the University of Sydney academic said.

Australian Medical Association president Dr Steve Hambleton said the removal of an $18.50 government incentive for doctors to chase up unvaccinated children would exacerbate the problem.

New data on immunisation rates in smaller areas shows the Richmond Valley on the north coast, home to the anti-immunisation Australian Vaccination Network, has the lowest immunisation rate in the country. Only 82 per cent of one-year-olds are fully immunised, falling to just 80 per cent for two-year-olds and 75 per cent of five-year-olds.

NSW Health infectious diseases expert Dr Jeremy McAnulty said two children died on the north coast last year during a whooping cough epidemic that infected 24,000 people. Western and southwestern Sydney were also hard hit by a measles outbreak, with 199 cases last year.Naturopath and mother-of-two Genevieve Milton is convinced vaccines can be harmful and decided against immunising her sons.

Husband Darrell, however, is pro-vaccination and admits he is not entirely comfortable with the decision. “I don’t know I totally agree with her but if Gen wasn’t going into this armed with all the information that she obviously has, then I would be more against her,” he said.Mrs Milton believes she can best protect sons Cadel, 4, and Keanu, 21 months, by strengthening their immune system with good nutrition, vitamins and good hygiene.

She says her boys “line up every day for their echinacea and fish oil” and stresses white sugar and flour must be eliminated from children’s diets for a strong immune system to develop.