Christmas Wish

As we enter the festive season we thought we would remind everyone of our primary aim with the rally.

Whilst we welcome the challenge and the adventure, we want to raise as much money as we can for the PMH Foundation. The Children’s hospital gives hope to families with children with serious illnesses.

Please read a little about Michael and Andrew Mitchel, Abbey Hart, Curtis, Isaac and many other little ones in the latest Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation newsletter ‘Bear Facts’. We are all financially pressed at this time of the year, but a small donation can still make a big difference. Follow the PMH Foundation link to access their Newsletter. 

Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and the Happiest New Year.

Best wishes from

Neil and Jo SEABROOK {TEAM WombatsKhan}

Ian and Ruby THOMPSON {TEAM Kangakhann}

Quiz Night Number 2

RSL

On the 9th MARCH 2013 we are planning our second ‘Quiz’ Night.

This event will be held at the Karratha and Districts RSL in Karratha (WA).

The RSL have kindly agreed not to charge us for the hire of the club, meaning more will go to the PMH Foundation. Not only that the RSL have also offered to cover the Extended Trading Permit at no cost to the Teams. 

Many thanks to the Karratha and Districts RSL for their kindness and helping us reach our charity goal.

 

Tickets will go on sale in the New Year.

Charity Update

The rally rules allow us to select our own charity, and both teams have selected the PMH Foundation here in WA. Our combined goal is to raise $25,000 for the PMH Foundation before the end of the rally next year.

Each team must also raise at least 500 UK Pounds for the rally official charity, and for 2013 this is Coolearth.

Team WombatsKhan have already raised the 500 UK Pounds for Coolearth through their sponsor Aviation Network Associates.

The yellow ribbon at the top of the blog will provide the grand total for charity money raised to date by both teams.

To understand what coolearth is all about, follow the link below.

Coolearth

If you decide to donate to coolearth rather than the PMH Foundation please let us have a copy of your receipt so we can link the donation to the teams. Thank you...

Sticky Situation

We just received our car stickers from our local Perth printer, to help us advertise the Rally here in Australia. When we tried to pay the invoice we were unable, as it had been paid for by another of our increasing number of supporters.

Many thanks to Nic Freeman for her generosity today, very much appreciated...

Two Teams One Charity

As most of you know we are two teams, both raising money for the PMH Foundation. You can now donate money to the PMH Foundation via either Team WombatsKhan or Team Kangakhann, or why not both. Look on the right side of the Team Blog and follow the Link.

To sponsor the teams, use the link on the left side of the Team Blog.

Official Rally Dashboard

We have a Dashboard on the official Rally Website for WombatsKhan, and KangasKhan will be following shortly. Follow the link below, or the button on the left 'Offical Rally Dashboard - WombatsKhan.

Bit of a gap since our last blog, well we have all been busy planning the route, and looking for cars, and chasing down possible sponsors. Oh, yes we have also been holding down day jobs.

http://www.theadventurists.com/wombatskhan

We have our first sponsor!!!

My sister Tanya is our first 'offical' sponsor. Her company Porsham Cakes is helping us get to Mongolia. More information is pending on what Porsham Cakes is all about, but the clue is in the name.....cakes for very special occasions. Tanya (Seabrook) Luke is in the process of putting a website together to show what she can do.

Wombats

Jo and Neil have an affinity with one of Australia's iconic animals, the 'Wombat'. After all we have named our team Wombats Khan !!!!

 

We are going to use the Rally media (This Blog, the Car etc) to advertise the plight of these animals. Hopefully we can help those working with the Wombats to raise funds as we go along with preparing for the Rally, and during the rally itself. When you have a moment, have a look at the websites - we will add links to our Blog in the next few days.

 

We recently touched base with a number of organisations who are working to save the Wombat. The Wombat Foundation is the not-for-profit organisation dedicated to saving the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat. The Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat is one of the world's most endangered species, it is more endangered than the Panda. At last count, in 2010, there were 176 Northern Hairy-nosed Wombats left on the planet..........makes you think doesn't it...

 

Find out more about the activities of The Wombat Foundation at

 

 www.wombatfoundation.com.au.

Fundraising Update

We have broken the $5,000.00 mark for funds raised for the PMH Foundation. Thanks to all of you of course. Pat yourselves on the back - well done and THANK YOU.

Wombat / Kanga Logo

We have added another page to include the Team Logo's - or what will eventually be the Team Logo's. Have a look under pages : LOGO

Sign Up Day

We have offically signed up (and paid) for the 2013 Rally. Check out the Adventurists web site, use the link, for videos and photo's for the launch of this years rally. This will give you an idea of what its all about, if you dont already know...

After the event

Saturday night was a great success thanks to our sponsors generosity and all those that came along and joined in with the Quiz night. Stitches the Bear from the PMH Foundation joined us and helped to get the evening going. We made over a $1000 for the PMH - a big thank you to everyone.

Joanna the quiz master / Les the adjudicator  / Keir and Brad the Bar People

Plus all those who helped set the hall up, and tidy away the mess afterwards........

THANKS

Final Chance for Tickets ....

Only TWO days till the charity launch event, the Quiz Night in Guildford.

It’s not too late to grab tickets, please give Neil a call on 0409118544 if you want to come along, there is still space.

Please check out our sponsor page (it’s still growing), unbelievable support from so many great people, thanks to you all. So many stickers on the cars, will we see any original paint when we set off?

Rally Update. Both Teams (Wombats-Khan) + (Kangas-Khan) are listed on the reserved list for the 2013 rally. We will ‘formally’ sign up to the event, and pay our dues at the end of this month. There is no turning back now!!!

Local Newspaper

The Local Newspaper picks up the story, follow this link to read the full article. Midland Reporter

PMH Media Release June 2012

PERTH COUPLE'S INCREDIBLE 16,000KM JOURNEY

Redcliffe couple Neil and Joanna Seabrook are preparing to travel 16,000 km from London to Mongolia in a second hand car rally organised to raise funds for charity as team Wombat-Khan. 

The Mongol rally is still a year away – but that hasn’t stopped the couples’ determined fundraising effort – the pair will split the money raised between WA’s PMH Foundation and a Mongolian children’s charity. To date Joanna and Neil have already raised more than $3000 for the PMH Foundation, and still have plenty of time to reach their $25,000 target. 

49-year-old Neil and 38-year-old Joanna expect the journey to take six weeks as they travel through Scandinavia, St Petersburg, Russia and Kazakhstan before their car is auctioned off when the pair reach the end of the road at Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. 

In accordance with the rules of the rally, the car driven must be second hand, less than 10 years old and have an engine capacity of less than 1.2 litres. 

Neil said the reason behind their determined fundraising effort for the PMH Foundation was to give something back to the children’s hospital, who among other organisations, made a huge impact on his wife Joanna and his step-son James. 

“Fifteen years ago, Joanna, who was then pregnant, was involved in a car accident in the south west,” he said. “The trauma of the car accident made Joanna go into labour prematurely and they both had to be air-lifted to Perth. 

“Today we are very lucky that James is a healthy 15-year-old boy and it’s nice to be able to give something back to thank PMH for the quality care he received.”  

Neil said they were looking forward to the rally but still had many preparations to go through before the event and just one of the challenges they were likely to encounter in many countries was the roads, with some being almost non-existent. 

“The trip is part of a birthday treat for me next year, as I turn 50, but it’s not only Joanna and I who will enjoy the journey as we hope we can raise enough to be of benefit to the organisations we are supporting as well,” he said.  

To donate to the Seabrooks visit their Everyday Hero page www.everydayhero.com.au/neil_seabrook. 

The Seabrooks are holding a quiz night to fundraise for the PMH Foundation in the Guildford Town Hall on July 21 from 7pm until late. To register your interest, contact Neil Seabrook on 0409118544 or via neil.seabrook@bristowgroup.com. 

The PMH Foundation was established in 1998, and has granted more than $35 million to PMH to fund life-saving research and capital projects. The Foundation has also funded close to a quarter of the equipment currently used by the hospital.

Team Sponsorship Update June 12

A special thank you on behalf of 'WombatsKhan' (Neil and Jo) to the big boss in Houston USA for supporting the team with a extremely generous personal donation - thank you Bill.

Whilst we are planning to be safe on the journey, the experience will undoubtedly result in Neil finally turning grey....

Donation Update

Its not just the big players making generous donations, many thanks to John from Perth RDC for his donation, gratefully received on behalf of the PMH Foundation...Well done mate.

Massive Donation from WOOLWORTHS

Woolworths Ltd RDC Perth, have gone the extra mile and donated a massive 3000 of those lovely Australian dollars toward our cause the PMH Foundation. What can we say, just a great big thank you from the Teams. THANK YOU...

Community Newspaper JUNE 5th 2012

London to Mongolia is their aim

 

Not so easy riders... Neil and Joanna Seabrook will be raising money for the PMH Foundation and a Mongolian charity.

REDCLIFFE couple Neil and Joanna Seabrook are planning what is sure to be an interesting journey.

Next year they will drive a car with an engine capacity of less than 1.2litres 16000km from London to Mongolia.They will take part in the Mongol Rally, raising funds for the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation and a Mongolian charity. Participants’ cars, which have to be no more than 10 years old, will be driven across countries including Kazakhstan and Russia where, in places, roads are almost non-existent and maps are sketchy.

A colleague of Mr Seabrook’s, Ian Thompson, and his wife Ruby also joined up to take part in the event and the two teams, known as Wombat-khan and Kangas-khan have joined efforts in a goal to raise $25,000.

As well as raising funds for charity, the teams each need about $30,000 to cover their costs.

Mr Seabrook and Mr Thompson are both engineers, so are confident their skills will be helpful if anything goes wrong while on the rally. It will be a challenge, with long days of driving, bad terrain and sleeping rough. Mr Seabrook said jokingly there had been a few divorces and a few marriages on the rally in the past but was sure he and his wife would get through it OK.

To follow what should be a fascinating journey visit ulaanbaatarorbust2013.blogspot.com.au.

Donations to the PMH Foundation

To make it easier to donate to the PMH Foundation we have linked to an 'Everyday Hero' page, see new button on the right, under the PMH Bear logo. Although the total funds raised shows zero we have in fact raised over $3,450.00 to date. Many thanks to all of you for making this happen....

Raise the profile of your Company, Club or Team

If you want to have your Company or Team or Club advertised on the cars, and across the various media during our charity campaign, then make a small cash contribution or donate something we can use in a raffle etc. and pass us your logo's and stickers. We already have a number of sponsors (see our sponsors page) but there is plenty of space left on the cars for many more stickers...thank you.

QUIZ NIGHT

(The Launch event)

Saturday 21st July 7pm till late.

The venue for this evenings excitement is the Guildford Town Hall, James Street Guildford. 

Support the teams and help raise money for the PMH Foundation. Great prizes to be won. Cost is just $10 per person and tables will be for 8 to 10 people. Get together with friends and family and have your own team, or come along and join a team. There will be a licenced bar.

What to bring: BYO Nibbles, and plenty of cash for raffle tickets and drinks.

For tickets please contact Neil Seabrook by phone (0409 118 544) or e-mail Neil.Seabrook@bristowgroup.com

Mongol Rally in Numbers

Sponsor Update

Check out our most recent supporters on the sponsors page. Many thanks to George & Teresa Minaides of Follow Me Campers and Nicole Campbell from Accor Hospitality...

Events

We have added an events page to the blog. The plan is to keep adding to this diary as events get locked in.

Chocolate

It seems a sweet tooth is useful when it comes to generating money for Charity. We joined up with Cadbury Fundraiser Australia and shifted nearly all of the first 960 chocolates in less than a week. We have ordered another shipment, Cadbury Australia responded to the second order with 'they went well, you must have a salesman's touch!!'. More likely its the chocolate starved people we have working at Bristow......

A special thank you goes to Kylie Cardinal from the Bristow Perth office, Kylie has a real gift for getting people involved in charity, well done and thanks Kylie - please keep up the great work....

PMH Foundation

We met again with the team at the PMH Foundation last week, including their marketing and communication guru's, to agree a timetable for our charity, and a launch event for the campaign. The aim is to make both the launch and timetable public in the next few weeks.

Between PMH and ourselves, we have chosen a specific research project to concentrate the charity efforts.  We will be linked to a family with a child that is undergoing treatment at PMH who is part of the research into understanding muscle pathology in children with Cerebral Palsy.  More to come on this over the weeks ahead........

We have had numerous individuals come forward offering their time and advice, and we thank each and  every one for taking an interest, and wanting to be involved. The more interest we generate the more money we make for the PMH. We will be taking you up on those offers (anyone want to wear a bear costume??!!!!!)......The key being to keep the momentum going for the next 15 months lead up to the actual rally.

Blankets for all

This week Neil collects a truck load of blankets from Qantas airlines. Many thanks to Qantas and in particular Murray Howard and his team at the Perth airport store. Blankets now taking up 1/2 the spare room!

QANTAS

QANTAS airlines have kindly offered to provide blankets for us to hand out along the route. We now have to figure out how to get the blankets to the UK for the rally start...

Sponsors

Check out our sponsors....we are working hard to get more sponsorship, so watch this space...

Blog amendment

There are now extra pages on the blog!! Sponsors are important, so they have their own page. The cars are also important, so we have started a page, just for them. There is also a page listing the provisions and equipment we are planning on for the rally.

The Route

We are reviewing the following routes, in no particular order

Route One:- England - France - Germany - Czech Rep - Poland - Ukraine - Russia - Kazakhstan - Russia - Mongolia...

Route Two:- England - France - Germany - Austria - Hungary - Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey - Iran - Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan - Kazakhstan - Russia - Mongolia...

Route Three:-England - France - Germany - Austria - Hungary - Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey - Georgia - Russia - Kazakhstan - Russia - Mongolia...

Update 5th March 2012

The Charity

Very exciting for us, we have selected the Australian charity we wish to support. In the end it was not that difficult to identify a most appropriate cause, and after some friendly discussions we have chosen the wonderful team at the The Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, the children’s hospital for Western Australia. We are now proud supporters of the PMH Foundation. 

PMH is one of five Australian hospitals fundraising together under the Children’s Hospitals Foundation. The PMH website is:- http://www.pmhfoundation.com/ 

We will now be spending much of our free time generating cash for this great cause.

You can use the PayPal link on the blog to contribute directly or e-mail us if you need more details on how to contribute, we can accept cash / cheques etc. More on the charity at the next update.

The Blog

We have an official blog and will use this to keep everybody updated on our preparations for the rally. We do intend to keep sending an update by e-mail as well, at least for the next few months.

The address for the blog is: http://ulaanbaatarorbust2013.blogspot.com.au/ for those less computer literate (like me!!) cut and paste this address into your browser, and it will direct you to our Blog, then make sure you save it as a favorite!! Once on the page, you will see a ‘followers’ link, and a follow by e-mail link, either link will ensure you are kept up to date with changes to the blog. You will get an e-mail whenever we add something to the blog.

The Sponsors

We have our first sponsor, a college from Neil’s time in Redhill (South of London, UK) has committed 500 of those Great British Pounds. What a brilliant start, and our thanks go to him. 

We will be exploring all options in the next 12 months for further sponsors, and will keep you all posted on our progress. If you are willing to help a good cause, that will attract considerable media interest please drop us a line.

Charity v Sponsorship

Keep it simple stupid.....

Any money raised for our Charity, goes directly to the Charity, we take zero commission. 

However, to help us fund the rally we are looking at sponsorship, each team (car) will have to find around $30,000 (Aus) which is a lot of money for anyone to self fund. 

If you would like further information on the Charity or Sponsorship please drop us an e-mail and we will happily discuss.

Help

How can you help make this a great success:-

• Join in with the events we arrange. 
• Become a supporter of our Blog.
• Contribute to our charities. 
• Sponsor the Teams. 

and most important of all

• Spread the word to your friends and family !!!! (Special thanks to Neil’s Mum and step Dad for introducing the Blog to their friends in the UK)..

Fundraising Events 

There will be a schedule of events confirmed in the next month or so, our first will be a Bingo/Quiz night in Perth, dates and venue to be confirmed.

Many thanks to those individuals who have already approached us with ideas on how to generate money for our Charity. Please keep talking to us...

The E-Mail Updates

Some of you wont want to receive e-mails from us, or use the blog, in this case just drop us a quick e-mail at wombatskhan@gmail.com and we will remove your details. 

Less than 2 hours after sending our first e-mail newsletter, i received a phone call from a friend in the UK pledging 500 pounds. What a fantastic start to our project. Neil

THE ULAANBAATAR or BUST BLOG

uuch-laa-rai bi…ruu zov yavj bai-na uu Ulaanbaatar. “Excuse me; am I going in the right direction for Ulaanbaatar?” 

Well we have done the easy bit; we have committed to the 2013 rally. Why would we do this you ask…it’s all about taking on a real life challenge, and in the process of an adventure, raise serious money for those less fortunate than ourselves – our charities.

The Ulaanbaatar or Bust Blog will be used to keep everybody updated on our progress in preparing for the rally. You can see a number of question marks on the front page of the flyer; these will be replaced with information / links etc., as we progress. 

The Basics

We drive a low powered very small un-modified car from the UK to the Capital of Mongolia. It’s around 16,000kms, depending on the route we decide on. There is no support and we have to arrange everything including route, navigation, permits, accommodation and visas. When we get to Ulaanbaatar the car is auctioned off and the money raised goes to charity.

Team Name(s)

Although we intend to enter the rally as one team, to comply with the event rules we have to enter each car as a separate team. So we have two team names. Although our plan is to complete much of the event together, there will times when we will drive separately.  

Team: - “The Wombats Khan” – Neil and Jo Seabrook wombatskhan@gmail.com 

Team: - “The Kanga’s Khan” – Ian and Ruby Thompson kangakhaan@gmail.com 

Charity 50% of the charity money we raise will go to a charity that we choose; the other 50% goes to the Mongolian Rally Charity – yet to be decided for 2013 (the 2012 charity is Lotus Children's Centre Charitable Trust ).

We are identifying an Australian based Charity, and hope to have one selected by the end of this month. 

Along with raising cash, we will be delivering many seemingly obscure items to us but essential  items to those less fortunate, for example; prescription glasses to communities along the route.

We will be running a number of events through the year to generate money for our charities and raise sponsorship to complete the challenge.

Fund Raising

Having to fund an event like this entirely on our own is not something we have a great deal of experience with, not only do we have to purchase the cars, we have to budget for food, accommodation (tents), visa’s, flights, fuel and equipment.  Not to mention things like insurance – you have an accident in the Gobi desert – you are on your own for the vultures!

We are working on around $30,000 per team for the trip.

We have started generating funds already, Neil and Jo now delivering the Local Community Newspaper to 520 homes every Tuesday night, this not only generates a little cash, but increases our fitness, preparing us for the event.  By delivering the Community Paper we make around $140 a month, which should pay for ½ of our budgeted $3,000 for fuel, for one of the cars.

Car

We have considered a number of different cars, although the selection was limited due to the engine size restrictions. We have all decided on the Suzuki Jimny. The rules dictate we must have a car in good condition, less than 10 years old that will survive the 16,000km drive…as a majority of this will be off road. Cars will be auctioned off at the end of the rally, and 100% of the money raised will go to the rally charity.

Route

We have decided to research 3 different routes, allowing some flexibility to take into account changes in political situations along the route between now and June 2013. The more countries we go through of course means more expense on visas. 

Help

How can you help make this a great success:-

• Join in with the events we arrange. 
• Contribute to our charities. 
• Sponsor the Teams. 
• Spread the word to your freinds and family.

We will advertise the events and how to help through this blog. 

The Cause

Two teams dedicated to              

changing the lifes of those less fortunate.