Motorists may have been startled at the sight of a two-metre Gruffalo wandering between Radford College and the National Library on Wednesday. But he was friendly enough.
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Radford College junior school head Paul Southwell made a bet with his students at the end of last year that he would don a massive Gruffalo suit - from the character in the children's book of the same name - and walk two hours across Canberra if students could rack up one million minutes of supervised reading by the end of first term.
They achieved the challenge within 11 weeks – one week ahead of schedule - with each child required to bring a parent’s signature to school each week signifying they had read for a certain period each night.
The reading tally began at the start of the Christmas holiday but by the first week back at school Mr Southwell knew he was in trouble when students had logged 627,651 minutes. That meant they only had to read for another 372,349 minutes over the next month to win. Which they did.
Meanwhile, Mr Southwell’s assistant dutifully began haggling for extra-large Gruffalo suits on eBay while Mr Southwell enrolled in Bikram yoga sessions to acclimatise himself.
On Tuesday night he was praying for a cool change.
The wet weather on Wednesday did little to hamper high humidity happening within the confines of the Gruffalo suit, but at least it wasn’t too hot.
Accompanied by loyal staff masquerading as a snake, owl, fox and mouse, Mr Southwell also had the school mini bus on standby in the event of dehydration, exhaustion or both.
Meanwhile, after a rowdy send-off, the junior school – all 560 students – bussed to the library to cheer the Gruffalo and his companions home, eating their lunch on the lawns while they waited.
A former Wallaby centre, Mr Southwall found it quite a physical challenge.
It is not the first time he has thrown his dignity to the wind in the name of encouraging literacy.
In fact, Mr Southwell is getting rather a reputation for engaging in “innovative” reading challenges across the junior school.
Over the past 11 years he has sat on the school roof dressed as a hippo (eating cake), immersed himself in a bath of jelly, been slimed, dunked and, horror of all horrors, been forced to wear an All Blacks jumper for a week – perhaps the most onerous and emotionally-taxing of all challenges.
But he is delighted to oversee a school of avid readers and said that this challenge was one supported by families, who emailed him photos of children immersed in books over the holidays.
“This was the thing that hit me, they persevered,” he said.
After more than two hours walking, and more than a few car horns being honked as he stumbled past, Mr Southwell sweatily pulled up on the grass outside the library just after midday to hundreds of cheering students – reward for his hard slog.
He made the distance with limited vision, peering most of the way through the Gruffalo’s mouth.
And he noted he would have gotten there quicker but for a toilet break at the Australian National University where it took him 15 minutes to get in and out of his suit.
All for the love of a good book.