A few weeks ago the call went out from Mawson station that all stations and the head office at Kingston are going to tighten up those upper body muscles and do a few push ups to raise some money for Headspace, a charity that helps thousands of young people a year in Australia access much-needed mental health support. Here at Macca we thought that would be a great event to get behind and jumped on straight away. What we didn’t know and forgot to ask before agreeing was, how many push ups we were going to have to do.
If you were wondering, we agreed to 3,046 push ups over 21 days. When the team here realised what we had agreed to, there were a few shocked faces, a few oh-nos and a few of the crew that were actually excited about the prospect. The total push ups of 3,046 sounds like a random number, but that number actually represents the number of lives lost in Australia due to mental health issues in 2018. A very sobering statistic.
The 11th of May rolled around and with that the first 135 push ups were owed from each of the 12 members of ‘The Macca Machines’ and with each passing day since anywhere between 120 and 232 new push ups have been owed. Whether we have been in the kitchen, digging a trench, in the field or conducting a fuel transfer, those push ups have been punched out (although not always logged).
The punishment will continue on until the 31st of May when many of the crew will be looking forward to a nice hot spa bath and a few days of no upper body work!
At the time of writing, The Macca Machines have logged over 20,000 push ups and raised $1,150 for headspace. Some are saying this is the buffest and best looking Macca crew in decades and I find it very hard to disagree.
