Episode 2: The Story of HMAS Morella

Chuck spent months and countless hours* putting together our trusty biodisel motorboat, Morella. Most of it was constructed on Bob's farm, 'Duckmaloi', about 2hrs north-west of Sydney.

While Oscar and Justin worked on sponsorship, finance and production issues related to the documentary in Sydney, Bob and Chuck made a move to the farm for a few months and hand-built Morella from scratch. One Steel gave us all the metal required but we also needed some extra cash for the motor, communications equipment and some odds and ends to complete our much-loved vessel. So we knocked up a project description on Pozible - an Australian crowd-funding website.

Don't believe what governments around the world tell you; the internet can be a wonderful place, abound with generous and helpful people (in fact we met a lot of our biodiesel contacts over the net). We raised just over $20 000 which gave us almost exactly what we needed to get Morella ready to hit the big, bad Bass Strait. The people who contributed will forever be enternalised in a plaque to be installed on the boat before we commence our next and final leg from Darwin to Signapore. We're hoping to then donate Morella to a needy island community in SE Asia (to assist them with cargo hauling etc) when we finish.

How did we get the name Morella? People who contributed various amounts of money via Pozible will receive extra tid-bits after we finish our final biodisel leg (eg. DVDs etc). But the highest contributor got naming rights to the boat. That lucky couple, my parents (ha ha of course!), chose to name it Morella.

Thanks to all the people who made the birth of Morella possible.

Alan Crabbe

Courtney Tight

Leah Kate Harapa

Tatham Oddie

Beck Murray

Gav Murray

Adam Trouncer

Alex Feetham

Ruchir Punjabi

Kirsty Wagner

Steve O'Malley

India Pembroke

lucy haege

Rosemary Fordree

Roger Nallen Pettersson

David Maxton

Roz Minifie

Victoria Johns

Dave Gregory

Charlotte Calder

Catriona Hancock

Lee Lo

Kate Fitzgerald

Marty Trembath

Nick Lonie

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* Because there was so much work to do, the final push to get it done happened in the 10 hours before we had to leave to make our way to our start point in Tasmania! Chuck and Bob couldn't finish it by themselves so Chuck called in favours from his brother and every friend he had to get the job done.