| A Gnome Away From Home 2010 |
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The fourth annual A Gnome Away From Home Event was held in Collingwood over the weekend of 20-22 August 2010. The tradition for this event is to start with a quiz night in the Collingwood Tavern. On Friday 20 august 18 teams of 4 people and their accompanying gnomes once again took over the restaurant. 60 general knowledge, and 20 gnome related questions were the cause of some serious head scratching and good natured rivalry.
Saturday 21 August was a lovely calm, sunny day as 23 people and about 30 gnomes set off from Collingwood to Farewell Spit. Various birds and a lazy seal watched as our bus went by. Everybody had fun on the dune and exploring at Fossil Point, Cape Farewell and the Lighthouse.
Sunday 22 August began with the Gnome run/walk. A mix of 18 runners and walkers (adults and children) set off up Gibbs Road, along Orion Street, onto Excellent Street, down Haven Road, finishing around the block and back onto Tasman Street. Last year's winner Steve Garrett was beaten by Graeme Williams. I think we could have an ongoing tussle between these two each year.
We appreciate the support from those who took part in our event, and those who donated prizes. We already have our pointy red thinking hats on, and are looking forward to coming up with some new ideas for next year.
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The Gnome sports began once again with gnome tossing. This year all three of our specially created tossers suffered ruptures on impact. We had to bring in two of our survivors from other years and one of these also met a very messy end. Two new games were introduced this year. There was ladder toss where you had to throw small gnome bags between the rungs of a ladder and finally through a cut out hole in a gnomes head. The second new game was gnome pin bowling. Elaine spent many happy hours transforming some empty 2.5 litre bottles into individual gnome personalities. This was a very popular game and all pins survived intact.
The ladies of the Golden Bay Quilting Guild made two very impressive Gnome Quilts - a single bed quilt and a cot quilt which we raffled to raise money for Collingwood Area School. $970.00 was raised and will be used to purchase aquatic equipment.
During the week leading up to our event a Gnome mystery was unfolding. We arrived at work on Monday 16 August to find a ransom note stuck to our from door. Poor Cyril was missing (we had no idea who cyril was but we played along). Every day there was a different demand and Cyril's situation was apparently getting more serious. We organised our ransom of 100's and 1000's and unmarked notes and took it to the designated drop point. When we arrived there was no sign of Cyril, instead we found Alf with a note saying Cyril and fled to Stockholm and wasn't coming back. We understand that sometimes a Gnome just wants a little more out of life. We hope he's happy and is being treated well.