Lions Ride creates better future vision

KORUMBURRA will be the base for this year’s ‘Lions Ride for Sight’, the 29th edition of an event raising funds to help eradicate preventable blindness and find cures or improved treatments for eye diseases, with this year’s journey beginning in Wonthaggi on Friday April 14.

The annual ride travels a variety of routes throughout Gippsland.

This year’s event starts in Wonthaggi, with riders tackling the hills of Woolamai, Nyora, Loch, Poowong, Drouin South, Jumbunna, Koonwarra and finishing the adventure in Korumburra on April 16.

A trio of sisters are participating, inspired by a family history of macular degeneration.

“It’s a big thing if we can raise money for research to find a cure or slow the disease,” Sharon Oates of Inverloch, one of the sisters said.

Her parents Colin and Pam, long-term Lions Club members, both have age-related macular degeneration, with Pam requiring eye injections every six weeks and Colin at an advanced stage of the condition and legally blind.

Sharon and her three sisters are in the early stages of macular degeneration.

The two siblings joining her on the ride are Kerry Fitzgerald and Leesa Willmott, with the other sister being Denise Bristow.

Of those riding, Sharon faces the biggest challenge over the approximately 240-kilometre course, only hopping on her bike in early February, while Leesa and Kerry were already social riders.

Sharon said she has generally been riding every two days, recently completing a 107-kilometre pedalling effort with Kerry and Leesa, passing through Archies Creek before lunch at the Grantville Corner Store and a return journey to Inverloch.

Parents Colin and Pam have been busy securing sponsorship for the cause, visiting various businesses. 

Lions Clubs long ago joined the fight against blindness, motivated by famous blind writer and activist Hellen Keller who issued ‘Lions Clubs International’ a challenge in 1925.

“Will you not help me hasten the day when there shall be no preventable blindness, no deaf, blind child untaught, no blind man or woman unaided?

“I appeal to you Lions; you who have your sight, your hearing, you who are strong and brave and kind. Will you not constitute yourselves ‘Knights of the Blind’ in this crusade against darkness?” 

Lions rose to the challenge and made research into and treatment of vision loss a fundamental aspect of Lions service. 

‘Ride for Sight’ was an initiative of the V3 District of Lions Clubs that is based in Gippsland and the Mornington Peninsula, with the inaugural ride going from Mallacoota to Melbourne.

Over the years the event has raised a staggering total in excess of $1 million for research into and treatment of vision loss, mostly conducted by the Centre for Eye Research and Vision Australia.

“‘Team Sisters’ would be very grateful if you could come on their journey and donate some much-needed funds for the ‘Lions Ride for Sight’ to help find cures for all the debilitating eye diseases,” Sharon said.

Donations to sponsor the sisters can be made online at 29th-lions-ride-for-sight.raisely.com/t/teamsisters and are tax deductible. 

The trio of sisters have set goals of completing the ride and raising $10,000, with the latter an objective they are on course to smash, having already reached a total of over $9,000 by March 22.