From down under to above & beyond: Aussie family treks to BI to pitch in at Rotary auction

By Luciano Marano • June 30, 2017 2:00 pm
Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years.
Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years. Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review - Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas, of Brisbane, Australia, came to Bainbridge Island this year to volunteer at and learn about the Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale, now in its 57th year, so as to better organize their own philanthropic garage sale back home, which has quickly grown in scope in just three years.

People have come from far and wide for nearly 60 summers to peruse the goods at the annual Bainbridge Island Rotary Auction &Rummage Sale — but very few have come from as far afield as the Grigaliunas family.

The friendly foursome from down under came all the way from Brisbane, Australia — more than 7,000 miles (or, you know, about 11,840 kilometers to them) — to pitch in and to learn from the seasoned vets behind the beloved Bainbridge tradition in the hopes of taking some of that experience back to the land of boomerangs and kangaroos.

Yas, Leigh, Layla, 11, and Libby, 9, Grigaliunas first learned about the island institution online, while doing a bit of research to improve their own philanthropic garage sale back home. It had proven more popular than they’d imagined, Yas explained, and quickly threatened to become unmanageable.

“We run what we call a garage sale in Brisbane and we started it back in 2013 and we were doing it to raise money for cancer research,” Yas said. “We have a lot of family members who have passed away with cancer, and we thought, ‘Let’s have a garage sale and try and raise some money.’”

That they did, and how.

Their inaugural event quickly outgrew their garage as donations came pouring in. So they found a new spot and corralled about 50 friends and family to help sort and arrange everything. The day of, the people start lining up to shop in the wee wee hours of the morning — and they raised $15,000.

The next year they got a little more official, used the donated space at a nearby school, got more volunteer assistance and reached out to the larger community via the local media.

That year, they sold enough stuff to raise $60,000.

In the third year, things got even bigger. They rented a warehouse space and sold $90,000 worth of goods.

“That’s when we found Bainbridge,” Yas said. “We call ourselves the World’s Biggest Garage Sale, then we found Bainbridge and went, ‘I hope they don’t find out about us because we’re not really the world’s biggest garage sale.’

“But you call yours an auction and rummage [sale],” she laughed. “So we thought it was a technicality, that you wouldn’t mind.”

This year’s visit to Bainbridge, their first trip to the area, has been a dream in-the-works for a while, one that started as a bit of internet stalking — the best possible kind.

“We’re garage sale groupies,” Yas said. “The minute we found you guys we followed your Facebook page, your Twitter, and everything social media, and I said to Leigh, ‘We have to go. I want to volunteer at that garage sale and learn from 50-plus years of success.’”

When a work trip was set to bring Yas to Florida, she arranged to work remotely for a week or so, and bring the whole family to Bainbridge for the big event and to stick around for the holiday festivities.

Last year, the family was traveling around Australia and took a year off from hosting the giant garage sale. They’re looking to return bigger and better soon, though, with the help of the tips and tricks they picked up in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re having fun,” Leigh said. “You guys have 57 years of evolution behind you here, where we’ve got three. I think you probably made a lot of the mistakes that we have made — and will make. But now we can take a bit of that learning home.”

Though it may not be every kid’s ideal vacation, both Layla and Libby said they were having a great time volunteering, working alongside the other kids and sorting all the stuff.

“It’s cool and I like working here,” Layla, whose been working mostly in the kids and toy departments, said.

“It’s been, like, really fun,” Libby agreed, though she said her favorite part was often the in-between work times.

“I think I like break [best], because we get to go outside and play.”

Both sisters said they’d made new friends, and would come back again next year if their parents would bring them.

The Grigaliunas family had shown themselves to be some of the hardest working volunteers of this — or maybe any — year, Rotary spokesman John Spuller said.

They were also, he added, the ones who came from the farthest away “that I know of.”

“We’re really grateful to be here,” Yas said. “[We’re] just loving it. We’re going to pull our weight and make sure we do Australia proud.”

“You are,” Spuller laughed. “You are, definitely.”

Some of the more immediate ideas Leigh and Yas plan to take home for their next sale (coming up in about four months), they said include condensing the donation period (theirs has been nearly a month long, as opposed to BI’s week-long blitz), organizing the items for sale by type instead of price, beginning their media outreach process earlier and, perhaps most importantly, partnering with their local Rotary chapter to take advantage of all the contacts and expertise that group’s members have.

“We’ll be taking a lot of what we learned here and applying it, of course, to this year and upcoming years,” Leigh said.