News Archive

Among the 2,200 swimmers who ploughed through the Rottnest Channel Swim last month, was a team called Channel Chewers.

As well as chewing up the 20 kilometres of open water in less than six-and-a-half hours, the two UWA graduates, one UWA student and their friend raised more than $2,000 for a Guide Dog.

The Channel Chewers are part of a campaign being run by Lindy Brophy in Public Affairs, to raise $30,000 this year to train a guide dog. It is a personal project, not a University campaign.

UWA has a special relationship with Guide Dogs.  Australia's first guide dog worked here, on the Crawley Campus, alongside her owner, economist Arnold Cook, in the 1950s.

Dr Cook was a UWA graduate who won a Hackett Scholarship to the London School of Economics where he acquired Dreena, a black Labrador, and brought her back to UWA. He then started the guide dog training program in Australia.

Today at UWA, administrative assistant Greg Madson is assisted by his guide dog Nicholas every day in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.  Claire McGlew studies final year music with her guide dog Swanee by her side. And staff development officer Claire Webb does preliminary training of guide dog puppies.

The final connection is that the Association for the Blind /Guide Dogs WA is celebrating its centenary this year, along with UWA.

So if Lindy manages to raise the $30,000 by the end of the year, she would like it to be a centenary gift from the University, although it is not an official University Centenary activity.

She is hoping staff and students will join her to achieve the goal.

"The HBF Run for a Reason is coming up, and I'm hoping there might be some runners at UWA who would like to take part but are still deciding on a cause," Lindy said. "If this is you, please get in touch and we can create an event page on the fund-raising website, as we did for the Channel Chewers."

To donate to the guide dog project, please go to the donation website .

UWAnews will keep you up to date with the campaign during the year, along with news of fund-raising events.