ORGANISED by the local Sciascia family, the Hamilton Speed Shear recently brought some action to the Hamilton Showgrounds, with the event proving very successful in raising over $6000 for the Western District Health Service (WDHS) MRI for U&I Appeal.
The competition had more than 180 entrants making it one of the biggest in the world, with competitors battling it out for the $10,000 first prize in the open section, which was won by Paerata Abraham who recorded a quick time of 19.48 seconds, while Tyla Gnys won the $4000 prize for the senior section.
Every person that attended the event made a small donation towards the MRI appeal on entry to help raise funds.
Event organiser, Erina Sciascia, said she was pleasantly surprised by the turnout, and said it was great to be able to make such a great contribution to a worthy cause.
“We are surprised that we got that much money, with having such a big event comes big costs, it’s no $200,000 donation but every little bit counts, we were just amazed and we had the best feedback,” she said.
Ms Sciascia said that her family has seen the need for the MRI machine first-hand, with her mother falling sick in recent times and requiring scans.
“When we started planning it, we spoke to one of our friends and they suggested that we do it for the hospital and then we thought, yeah why not do it for our own community,” she said.
“We’re going to see where the money goes really, as we got into the planning, three months ago we found out our mum is a bit sick and needed an MRI, and we had to drive her to Warrnambool.”
The Sciascia family toured the hospital a few days ago and looked at the large-scale MRI works that their donation will be contributing towards.
“We all loved that, it was cool to see as we honestly thought it was just a machine put into a room, but when he (WDHS chief executive, Rohan Fitzgerald) showed us how big the process was, we loved that,” she said.
“We’re grateful for the Showgrounds people because they let us use that venue for free, because we were doing it for the hospital.
“It was myself, my mum, dad, sister and our two partners who helped organise it, we’re thinking about putting on another one next year as well to go to the same great cause.”
