Words: Lucie van den Berg
Photography: Tim Carrafa

Rising prices rattle out of the auctioneer’s throat as quickly as the beer flows down the bidder’s gullets.

Auction item No. 64 is held high above the hundreds of heads, paraded like a sports trophy or a baby who has just been baptised.

It’s just a dirty old brick someone found in the beer garden, but tonight it’s billed as bushranger Ned Kelly’s doorstop. When the bids pass $50 it’s clear the punters crammed into the tiny pub are not just lubricated with the local brew, they are drunk with generosity.

Spuds, chooks and pot plants are soon as inflated as Melbourne’s property market.

It’s well before midnight when a pumpkin fetches $100.

But there will be no buyer’s remorse in the tiny town of Boorhaman, 18km north of Wangaratta.

The auction is how its 25 residents make more money for The Royal Children’s Hospital’s Good Friday Appeal per capita than any other town in the country last year. For the top five most generous communities it’s a cause that couldn’t be closer to their hearts, yet be farther from their homes.

Click here to read the full story in the Sunday Herald Sun.

To donate to The Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal, go to goodfridayappeal.com.au or phone 9292 1166.