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Meet Lyndoch Living resident Bernie.
Bernie was born in Warrnambool in 1940 and has lived here his entire life. Bernie had seven siblings, three brothers and four sisters and attended Saint Joseph’s Primary School Warrnambool.
After finishing school, Bernie went on to get a job at Nestle in the coffee plant, where he worked for 40 years.
At the age of 17, Bernie started running in his spare time. He soon realised he was good at it. So, taking it more seriously, began training, saying that he would run 11 miles (close to 18km) every night. Eventually, Bernie got a trainer and began competing all over Victoria.
Bernie’s list of achievements for his running is a mile long, but here are just a few of his proudest:
– 2nd in the 50-mile Championship: This race took him six hours and four minutes to run and was 200 laps of Olympic Park in Melbourne.
– 3rd in the professional Cross Country Club Marathon: taking two hours and 32 minutes to run.
– 1st in the 20,000-metre ang Classic, taking 69 minutes and 10 seconds, which saw him set a new record.
– 1st in the 10km Caledonian Classic.
Simply amazing!
Another one of Bernie’s passions was horse racing. In 1980 he had a horse named Tutorsrash which won at Sandown. Bernie still loves horse racing, saying he tunes in to whatever races are on each day.
When Bernie retired, he began volunteering at various nursing homes in Warrnambool, including Lyndoch. He would come in each day with bags of lollies and give them out to residents and staff. He said that he knew there were people in nursing homes who didn’t have regular visitors, so he wanted to make those people happy.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Bernie.
