Grey Gum Cafe

For many years, the motorcycling community had a mother and a father, advocates and saviours, somewhere on one of the most popular motorcycles routes in NSW. The owners of Grey Gum Cafe, Kim and John Grace, have been supporting our community, looking after the hungry, the thirsty, and too often – the injured. Taking them in, and treating everyone like one big family.

A few weeks ago, we’ve learned that our father, John, had fallen ill, and was diagnosed with brain cancer.

It took about 4 seconds, after reading Kim’s post on facebook, to know what to do…

The idea was simple: Let’s get a few bikes (and maybe a few pillions), go for a ride and stop for lunch at the cafe, like we’ve done so many times before… The only difference was – the number of riders involved. We aimed to have a few more than we usually have come of those rides.

At first, we had quite a few positive responses, and the love came pouring out for John and Kim. Lovely notes of support, encouragement for the initiative, and quite a few people asking for an Event to be organised, and a way for people who can’t make it, to donate money. It was all very quick – the date we set was only two weeks ahead, so everything had to be done quickly and efficiently…

We organised an event, and set up a GoFundMe page to collect donations. And the donations came in, along with messages to Kim and John. What happened next, was quite unbelievable. At least – unexpected…

Within a few days, we had over 150 riders selecting Going on the event page, and over 500 people showed interest… At the time of the event, we had 303 riders confirmed, and 847 “interested”!!

On the day, we had 392 bikes, a few pillions, and quite a few cars too!

The response was overwhelming! The stories about John and Kim, and the impact they had on the community, just confirmed why this support was so deserving… Speaking of support – we have acknowledged our supporters in this Facebook post (and comments).