ALL records have once again tumbled as the Casterton district joined the state in raising an unprecedented amount for the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Good Friday Appeal.

The overall appeal record was last set in 2020, when $18.2 million was raised and last year, despite two hard years under Covid-19 rules, the Casterton district smashed all of its previous records by around $10,000.

All bets were off again for the 2022, as both of those figures were met and surpassed, with the local record contribution of $27,514, part of a state record of $22,328,154.

“We have to thank the Casterton community for its outstanding support of this appeal, each and every year,” local committee secretary, Joy Harvey said.

“Every business owner and community group that has a collection tin on their counter, everyone who buys a raffle ticket, everyone who answers the door and puts their hand in their pocket to make a donation when our volunteer collectors come calling – it all adds up to a huge contribution to the Royal Children’s Hospital,” Ms Harvey said.

“We need to mention All Sorts of Casterton, which sells second-hand books during the year, with all proceeds going to the appeal effort and this year, has contributed around $1500 to the collection.

“And to Lionel, Bronwyn and the team at Casterton Central, who once again have gone above and beyond, raising around $10,000 towards the local total.”

She also thanked the volunteer collectors who turned up to pound the pavement or drive local roads, to rattle tins.

“Once again we had great support from the community, with lots of our regular families and collectors turning out to help, including players from the Casterton Sandford Football Netball Club,” Ms Harvey said.

“We also had our families who head out to Wando Vale, Bahgallah, Sandford and Dunrobin – a big thank you to those collectors and to those communities, who add to the appeal efforts.”

Casterton Central became Party Central once again for Good Friday, with a Kids Corner, Live Band, auctions and raffles drawing attracting more than $10,000 in payments and donations to the appeal.

“Our auction and raffle items were very generously donated from local businesses … the auction raised $3215 and the raffle would easily have made $2500, we sold about 120 coffees for the day – all of that money went to the appeal,” Mrs Balzan said.

“And everyone is just so generous and so lovely … there were people coming in during the week saying ‘oh, we won’t be here Friday, here’s $100,” she said.

“There were envelopes of money just being dropped off from people.”