Jason Baldock, Colleen Flynn and Tania Baldock.
Weeks of silly antics, large donations and community hype have finally ended with Jason Baldock chopping off his locks in front of a large crowd at Party on Parker Street with a huge sum of money to donate to Can Assist.
It was an event weeks in the making, starting with a few silly photos and a cause, Jason and Tania Baldock have turned it into a nationwide spectacle, making over $100,000 for Can Assist and appearing on Studio 10.
Jason was extremely proud of the community for jumping on board with his idea and even said the new haircut was a great change of pace.
“It feels good. It’s easy to get a shirt on now and easy to get in my ute, I did have to prop my head up on another pillow last night.
“It’s really good to give it to a good cause like Can Assist because every cent they raise gets given back to the community.
“I’m proud of the community and proud of what me and my wife have managed.
“[the community] got behind it and took it on as their own and wanted to see it succeed.
“They’ve gotten behind it and put the money in and helped out, we got a lot of donations from outside Coota like Tasmania, Melbourne, Wagga, Sydney, everywhere.”
Now that this is all said and done, it’s back to business for Mr Baldock.
“I’ll never change being normal Baldock. I’m back to work, I’m back to being me. Not that I’ve ever tried to be someone else, I’m still just me with less hair.
“[The donations] just grew and grew and grew and we would have been happy with $20,000, which me and my wife didn’t really think we’d get to and now we’re probably going to end up with around the $120,000 mark.
“We didn’t really expect it but it just took off, everyone got behind it. Tania was going to stop taking larger donations to chop my hair, I said no, we’ll make it work. Just take bigger bites and chew faster and so we did.
“I just want to thank everyone; I appreciate their donations. I’d love to get around to everyone and thank them personally, but we’ve been a bit busy lately, but please know that whatever they gave, whether it was $5, $1, or $3,000, we appreciate it.
“We are pretty proud of what we’ve done and probably really need to mention my wife, Tania. She was the one that put it all together, everyone thinks it was me but she’d done 60% of the work and I turned up to look like an idiot.
“She’d be up till 3:30am, every night and starting again at seven in the morning to get us to our next photo shoot.”
Colleen Flynn of Cootamundra Can Assist was more than grateful for what Jason and Tania had raised for them.
“The money that we raise doesn’t get used for anything, except for people’s medical costs. We don’t use it for anything else,” she said.
“We have a barbecue in the street once a month, some of the money goes towards buying the food for that barbecue to make more money, and then it’s put back in for the clients’ medical costs.
“We don’t use it for anything other than the medical expenses, or accommodation for people to get the treatment. We’re all volunteers.
“It has been spectacular. [Jason] has been so funny and so clever. Tania worked so hard for this and they deserve all the credit. They really do.
“We get no Government funding, all the money that comes in and goes out again, is coming from the community to go back into the community.
“We are just very grateful to Jason and Tania for what they’ve done for us.”
You can still go back and check what silly photo shoots and antics Jason gets up to on Facebook and Instagram which include some hilarious photographs that turned Jason from a local legend into a nationwide sensation.
Well done, Jason, you’ve done the community proud.
Jack Murray