SNEZ E-News Tour Update - Peace on the Highway and cracks in the Roof

Freddy in his harness

Sri Chimnoy Peace Run

The more we drive, the more the heat intensifies as we get further and further north. We just passed the Northern Territory border....we are officially out of Queensland....thought we'd be there forever.
It's been a pretty wonderful couple of days. In these parts, it's usually about 400 km between fuel stops and the first one on the Barkly Highway was the Barkly Homestead - just a petrol station and camping ground. We filled up, got a coffee, killed a couple of flies and continued on towards Tennant Creek. About 30 kms outside Barkly we passed someone running in the heat, carrying a lit torch - not a soul around. We thought ..."Well he's keen! Does he have a support team?" It's towards 40 degrees on the road, so we were sure he'd have some kind of support team tagging along to supply water etc. Sure enough about 1 km on, there was a van that said 'Peace Run' and about 5 guys including a photographer out on the road. We stopped and got chatting on the side of the highway in scorching heat. The Peace Run is a 15,000 km torch relay, which started in Canberra on the 26th April and will go right around Australia until the 15th August. The team has 15 runners from nine different countries including Germany, Holland, Latvia, Mongolia and some Aussies and more. Each runner has to run about 6 to 20 km a day. We mentioned we were musicians and they asked us to play a song and so out came our guitars - we don't have to be asked twice! We sang 'Rainbow Song' right there on the side of the Barkly Highway to the five of them.  Everyone was excited, They said later we lifted their spirits. Then in turn they sang us their Peace Song. They were heading toward QLD, we were heading the other direction, so we gave them our CD for their drive and we parted ways.


CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO ON THE BARKLY HIGHWAY

 

'Peace Run' On the Barkly Hwy, NT

Performing for the runners
at the Barkly Homestead

The beautiful thing about the Peace Run, is that it doesn't strive to raise money, it's main goal is to spread goodwill amongst the people of all nations, being a torch bearer for a better world. The main message is "Peace starts within ourselves". We kind of like that!  As we drove away from them, we were so excited to have met them we decided we would head back to Barkly Homestead to get to know them better and maybe do a small concert for them. We caught up with them and they were blown-away with our suggestion - so back we went to Barkly Homestead. The bonus waiting for us at Barkly was a fresh shower, a pool and a refill of our water can, which was getting dangerously low.
We shared a meal with them, asked (and answered) many questions and they then asked us to do our impromptu concert. I shared my stories and shared my inspirations.

The new torch bearers

They sat transfixed, watching our every move - nice! And then when we finished, to our surprise, one of them presented us with the 'Peace-Run Torch Bearer Medallion Award' each. His short speech said they present the award to people they meet who they find inspiring and who show selfless-service. Then he hung 2 medals around our necks! Get out of here! We just sang a few songs :) Talk about a humbling experience. Anyway, we were honoured to receive their award. We felt like we were in a movie! I guess we must have touched them!


They farewelled us with the 'Peace Run' song (which they invited us to sing with them) and a 'Thank You' song. Such a special experience, I'm still pinching myself to have been involved with such beautiful people.

Please check out their website and you'll see some of these pictures on the site, taken by one of the peace runners.
PEACE RUN

Well we've just been offered two belated gigs at the Mataranka Homestead for this Thursday and Friday which is just before Katherine - all I can say is 'I hope there's a pool!' 

Okay, smell ya later
snez & stew