Back on the mainland of Australia, the main ceremony for today was organised by the City of Greater Geelong and held at Newcomb Park Primary School.

Our youngest team member for the day, Christian, led us into the school, where we were greeted by an avenue of cheering children.

Principal David McPherson warmly welcomed the runners

and the ceremony began with an official 'Welcome to Country' and singing of the National Anthem.

The Geelong Mayor, Bruce Harwood, then spoke of the city's long association with the World Harmony Run,

and reminded us of the street named in honour of Sri Chinmoy, the Run's founder, that he had unveiled last year at Riverglen Holiday Park. (The team's accommodation for tonight is in a cabin on this 'Sri Chinmoy Street')

We were thrilled to present a Torch-Bearer Award to Tegan Edwards,

a student of the school, who was awarded for her outstanding contribution to the school community in creating a 'Friendship Stop' at the school for students who were feeling lonely and needed the hand of friendship extended to them. We were impressed that Tegan not only noticed other students' isolation and felt for them, but took the initiative to develop a solution and put it into action. She inspired us by her personal qualities of graciousness, poise, humility and compassion which were evident in her response to receiving this award.

The ceremony ended with a rendition of the World Harmony Run song, accompanied by our able musician-friends Siobhan O'Shannesey and Bobby Donohue, current and past Melbourne Symphony Orchestra musicians.

Before our Geelong Ceremony, two of our Team members: Kylie (SA Co-ordinator) and Runar (runner from Iceland) started the day with a live interview on ABC South East, and relayed to Mt Gambier SA on ABC Radio 1476 AM as a prelude to the Run's arrival in South Australia.

Interviewer Stan Thompson spent 10-15 minutes asking many questions about our event and this audio, along with a Geelong Advertiser article about Tegan, is posted in our Media Library.

Next we headed down to Point Danger at Torquay, to meet with Councillor Rose Hodge and Mayor Dean Webster of the Shire of Surf Coast.

We gathered around the plaque which had dedicated Point Danger as a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom about 10 years ago when the World Harmony Run had previously visited the Surf Coast.

Rose spoke enthusiastically about the importance of involving communities in the World Harmony Run program, and the honour she felt personally in being part of the event.

Next Michelle Barnes and her troupe of wonderful singers and drummers, performed a unique arrangement of the World-Harmony-Run song. The drums brought out the dynamism of the song wonderfully, and even some local dolphins responded by appearing – but we didn't manage to catch a photo of them!

The runners then set off for Bellbrae Reserve where we met with children from Bellbrae Primary School,

who had been working hard on their artwork and sweet quotations on harmony, which they presented to us.

The principal, Stephen McDonald, and all the staff were delighted with the children's response to our game of 'guess the nationalities of the runners' which they thought was a good lesson in geography.

Once again Michelle and her troupe assisted us with the World-Harmony-Run theme song before the children formed a large circle to pass the torch and add their heartfelt wishes for world harmony.

Welcome to Elke Lindner from Germany who will join the run now until the very end back in Brisbane,

and also to Grahak Cunningham who is with us for a week until he goes off to New York to take on his own daunting task of the Self-Transcendence 3100-mile Race.

After the running was all over we paid a visit to the famous Bells Beach for a (very) cool swim and relaxing fun.

– 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.

---

Team Members:
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), Colm Magee (Ireland), Peter Elliot (Australia), Prachar Stegemann (Australia), Pushpendra Uppal (Australia), Grahak Cunningham (Australia), Sushmitam Rouse (Australia), Melinda Pearson (Australia), Uddyogini Hall (Australia), Friederike Makowka (Switzerland), Angela Muhs (Germany), Elke Lindner (Germany), Nataliya Lehonkova (Ukraine), Kylie Williams (Australia)

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

Gallery: See more images!

< Australia 28 May

Australia 30 May >