Team A

After a perfect night's sleep kindly sponsored by Barry Reynolds at the scenic Clydesdale Motel in Casino, we travelled to Manifold Public School – a primary school with only 32 children. This visit was a beautiful experience for the Australian World Harmony Run that set the tone for an unforgettable day. The entire school – teachers and students – were all extremely enthusiastic about principles of the World Harmony Run and the young students delighted the team with their own ideas on how they could help create a better world. "We can share our toys", "make sure we don't put plastic bags in the ocean" and "be kind to our family." were some of the heartfelt suggestions.

 

The powerful 'family' feeling at this school embraced all of the members of our team and we were delighted when we were kindly invited to stay for a DELICIOUS home-baked morning tea extravaganza, thus extending our stay a little longer in this perfect little part of the world.

Principal Natalie Lennon and staff so liked the motto of the World Harmony Run: "Harmony begins with me", they decided this will be their new 'mantra' for all daily morning school assemblies.

The rest of the day for us was on the road heading to Grafton – sixty kilometres running alongside some of New South Wales' most breathtaking state forests. Everything was perfect – the blue skies, the eucalyptus fragrance bursting from the forests, the WOW of a sunset – EVERYTHING! As three of the four members of our team are internationals, there was great excitement when we spotted our first wallaby on the roadside!

Our gratitude to Manifold Public School and Mother Nature for sumptuously feeding our hearts and souls on this day 5 of the epic 111 day journey.

– Nataliya Lehonkova (Ukraine) and Anubha Baird (Australia)

 

Teams B & C

Our running team was contacted by the local ABC Radio station today as we just finished our ceremony in Grafton. The radio host asked about the World Harmony Run and was amazed that someone would have the energy and stamina to run for almost four months around Australia!

But hearing our message and the inspiration we have from the founder of the World Harmony Run, Sri Chinmoy – and from all the children, teachers, politicians and people we meet along the way, especially during our ceremonies in schools, he understood our enthusiasm and the message of the Run.

We explained the relay and told him about the members of our team and which countries they all come from. He seemed very interested that someone would come all the way from Iceland to run around Australia and asked me all about myself and my country. I told him that I was just 9 years old when the Peace Run came to my school in Iceland and that had such a deep impact on me that now, 21 years later I'm running a whole continent!

He wished us all good luck on our journey and hoped that we would reach as many people as possible with our message.

– Runar Gigja (Iceland)

 

It was a truly wonderful day today as everything fell perfectly in place and I am beginning to feel the readiness for whatever experiences should come to us out here on the road which I'm sure will be a full variety of challenges and joys.

We started our day in the best possible way, with smiling children:

Our visit to Grafton Public School filled our morning with inspiration and laughter: our spokesman Runar Gigja from Iceland had an immediate rapport with the kids and there was a great spirit filling the assembly area:

The team's favourite game with the kids is the "guess the nationality of each runner " game – all day long we enjoy the results and interesting answers that we get from the guesses made during the game:

Today when Dima spoke in his own language and gave clues there were no successful guesses – until one young man, instead of putting up his hand to be chosen, rose up from the floor and stomped like a wrestler heading to the match of his life, forward of the rows of children and with a gritted jaw and finger pointing forcefully to accentuate his absolute assurance, belted out with full body language in support "UKRAINE!"

Everyone erupted from his dramatic display of certainty in a loud applause and we followed through the day doing our best imitation of his John Wayne-like stance and pistol shooting answer, though sadly I was so absorbed in his delivery I forgot to snap his picture.

The Mayor of Grafton also arrived to greet us and delivered this stirring message to all present:

"I'd like to personally say to you how happy I am that the Harmony Run has come here today to remind us through sports of the importance of world harmony, the importance of tolerance, the importance of peace. This Run started twenty-odd years ago and what it's about is sending a message to everyone around the world that it's really, really important that we embrace peace and that we recognise the importance of mankind. That's what it's all about – that without peace in the world and without harmony we are a much lesser place."

We finished our visit with a run round the square full of laughter and excitement. There is truly some special magic carried in the Torch which is passed from hand to hand and heart to heart throughout Australia and the world because it never fails to produce smiling, joyful laughter.

Running out from Grafton south to Glenreagh was a fantastic stretch. We saw our first kangaroo of our whole journey (this is old news to Australians but VERY exciting if you are coming from Ukraine for the first time!) and searched the eucalyptus trees in vain for a koala bear.

The road was silent and almost carless which gave us a chance to enjoy the personal inner feeling of running in the peaceful countryside, replenishing us with soothing calm.

We met a few four-legged friends as well: while we waited for our runner Marichi to arrive, three horses ran over to greet us and we gave them a handful of grass and petted their heads and enjoyed each other's warm company.

After pushing our van out of the mud on the roadside, we resumed the day's running filled with happiness and smiles through roughly 60 kilometres of similar terrain. We couldn't ask for more!

Our last stop of the day was the Glenreagh Public School. Though we arrived a few minutes late, we found everyone waiting for us there cheerfully and eager to welcome us into their midst.

I'm glad they had the patience to wait for us since we had a beautiful ceremony passing the torch around a circle and talking about how we all can find harmony in ourselves and then from there to the world.

 

After everything was said we ran all together out to the gate and parted ways physically – but will stay together in our oneness-hearts for a long, long time.

Thanks to everyone we met today – the children, the Mayor, the horses, the kangaroo and the landscape for making it all flow so magically together in Harmony.

And a very special thanks to:

C.M.C.A. Casino Village Motor Park Home, for their gracious hospitality in putting us up last night.

and to Terry Garrett of Perfect Pizza in Bellingen for filling our empty stomachs after a most fulfilling day!

– Prabhakar Street (Canada)

If you would like to place a link or a write a story about the World Harmony Run on your website, click here to Link to Us. We'll be happy to place a reciprocal link and list you on our Friends Online page.

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Distance: 185 km

Team Members:
Angela Muhs (Germany), Anubha Baird (Australia), Nataliya Lehonkova (Ukraine), Garbitashri Webster (New Zealand), Prabhakar Street (Canada), Edi Serban (Romania), Standa Zubaty (Czech Republic), Sandro Zincarini (Italy), Runar Gigja (Iceland), Marichi Clarke (Australia), Misha Kulagin (Russia), Dima Lehonkov (Ukraine), Veeraja (Uppal (Australia)

Harmonemail:
You can send a message to the runners or read the messages.

Gallery: See more images!

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