Honouring Their Pop

Pictured above: Matthew Gillie (left) and brother Adam (right) will reunite for the swim.

On Saturday February 25, OV siblings Matt (SVC1987-92) and Adam (svc 1990-94) Gillie competed in one of Australia’s most iconic sporting events and the largest open-water swim - the Rottnest Channel Swim.  This swim is 19.7 km from Perth’s Cottesloe Beach to Rottnest Island (Wadjemup).  This annual event brings more people to the island than any other day of the year and this year almost 2 700 competed  - some solo, others in pairs or in four person teams.

Matt and Adam combined with two friends to tackle the challenge and it was the first time the brothers had seen one another since pre-COVID.  Their motivation for doing the swim was to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research - a cause close to their hearts as this disease had taken the life as their much loved grandfather some twenty years ago.