It’s a balmy Saturday evening by the ocean in Sydney. The waves are lapping gently against the shore – it’s a night like any other. But hang on, if you look closely, you’ll find there’s a man wearing Christmas socks running up and down the corridors of a hotel in Manly; he has a stye in one eye and a slightly harried look in the other. He’s looking for his shoes – let’s hope he finds them soon, because any moment now he’s going to be delivering goats and uhm, X-Boxes to a few lucky individuals. He’s hoping to help make some dreams come true tonight - could he be Santa? No, of course not – it’s Dave Allinson – nice socks Dave!

The Saturday night in question was, of course, the night of the Tabitha Fundraising Ball and what a fabulous night it turned out to be.

First of all, let me say an enormous thank you to everyone who attended and helped us to raise a whopping $12,000! This means that in one night you all helped raise the money for 10 families to get roofs over there heads this year, and that really is quite fantastic. Thank you! But what of the actual night? Well, Dave found his shoes and the harried look started to recede as the glamorous guests started to arrive. The fabulous Jean Sennett and Aimee Doig acted as stunning hosts - on hand to guide guests through to the ballroom and out onto the balcony for champagne with an ocean view. Soon everyone was settling down at their tables to commence the evening’s festivities. The wine flowed, the scrummy food arrived and the speeches commence. We were very lucky to have Doug and Jude Quarry attend and Doug made a very moving speech explaining how he and Jude came across Janne and Tabitha Cambodia on a work trip around ten years ago. They were so inspired by Janne’s work that they started Tabitha Foundation Australia and the rest, as they say, is history.

It is hard to believe that such a small organisation as Tabitha has already helped to provide houses and livelihoods to 1 in 20 people in Cambodia! How inspiring! We also had the very impressive Kate Brennan, NSW Young Australian of the year, to tell us about her personal experiences in Phnom Penh. She is wise beyond her years and I think everyone in the room found her description of the children who work daily on the rubbish tips in Phnom Penh heartbreaking. What can you say to that except: let’s raise some more money and build some more houses?

With the speeches over, the auction began, with our rousing auctioneer, who we think came from somewhere in the Outback. There was a good deal of hilarity as the many and varied items went under the hammer. Our favourite moment though had to be the sale of a goat to a savvy young gentleman with an eye for a bargain - or maybe a taste for the wine. In any case, the goat has gone to a good home and we believe that Vid will be visiting it regularly to make sure it is well. I hear it’s been asking if you could send over some fresh carrots and maybe some wheatgerm juice for brekkie, Vid.

And so to the dance floor. The rest of the evening was devoted to - well, for most, more drinking and - uhm - acting the goat, but a few movers and shakers were seen carving up the dance floor to the toons of DJ Nick on the decks – J Lo eat your heart out, cos we sure know how to move those hips – well, OK, so I admit I was out there with the best of them and we might not have looked like J Lo, but we sure had some fun.

In the background some wily bidding was occurring in the silent auction – there were even some Tabitha Board members outbidding each other. There sure were some cool items though, from glamour bags to uhm PDAs and other mobile devices - well, there were a lot of Microsoft attendees and partners, so we though they were cool! Jude, however, managed to secure two items in the silent auction and she’s still trying to work out what they do. Jude, they will organise the next building trip for you – in fact, you won’t have to lift a finger – they will build the houses for you. What do you mean, do I work in Sales at Microsoft?

Then all too suddenly the evening was over (although I heard tell that for some it was not quite over and in fact the night included a visit to a lovely Aussie pie shop… mmm). And so to bed. I pondered many things that night, one of them was whose silly idea it was to pick the night the clocks change (OK, so I might have been involved in that); another was just how Dave had managed to pull everything together and what had kept him going. Partly, the answer to that is Catherine – his lovely wife. The other part was brought home to me on Monday morning – as I went for my morning hit of coffee in the Bistro, I bumped into Dave and Catherine with their youngest daughter, Isobel. Isobel, as many of you know, is Cambodian by birth and Dave and Catherine adopted her. She is wonderfully cute and adorable and, well, just like any other 5-year-old really. There she was in her tiny pink outfit excitedly spraying coke across the Bistro and Dave and telling us about her big sisters, who she clearly adores, without a care in the world. And it hit me – how different her life would have been were it not for Dave and Catherine? And how different would the lives of the children in the 10 families you all housed be? No roof over their heads, maybe they would have to be split up from their parents, maybe they would have to end up working on rubbish tips eking out a subsistence from the garbage, with the stench of rot and decay? Isobel is a constant and very real reminder of what could and should be possible for all the children in Cambodia.

Thank you all. We hope you had fun and we hope you can come on the build trip.

An extra big thank you to Fabio, Kathryn, Amy, Jean and Katrina – you are all awesome.