We were amazingly humbled to see such a huge turnout for our first fundraiser for Matthew’s new prosthetics, held on 27 February 2013. The event, being a showing of Lincoln at the Barracks theatre in Brisbane, was sold out thanks to the efforts of Rob Ully and the team of Camilla Montgomery, Benita Blunden, Laura Hahn, Graeme Bartrim, Bob McGowan, Michael Lane, James MacDermott, Chris Pratt, Ollie Morozow, and Rachel (Fraser).

Outstanding demand for 50/50 tickets required some hasty work by quick thinking engineers (are they ever not?) to make tickets out of post-it notes. The winner was one of our organisers, James, who promptly donated the $715 back to the fund. We also received a number of personal donations in lieu of attendance, which was very humbling. Rachel’s still working out the details of how much was raised, but it’s in the area of $5000.

We were also blown away by the generosity of QANTAS, who donated return tickets to the US for the family so Matthew can go to Chicago for his bionic arms when he’s ready. This is probably being read by a group of people who don’t grumble about much anymore, but waiting on a tarmac due to maintenance issues will now be an ‘opportunity for reflection’, rather than a delay.

Thank you to everyone involved.

Here are some photos of the evening, courtesy of the ‘team’: