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Yeppoon to Yapeen & Jurassic Park mania

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The Nugget
April 11, 2025

★ The long ride home with Jason Lester ★

Jason Lester: Voted most likely to be elected PM and most likely to end up in jail.

This time two years ago, Jason Lester was in a wheel chair with two broken feet.

“I jumped off of something I shouldn't have and landed on something I shouldn't have, whilst not wearing shoes,” he says.

“It was just a horrible accident that went wrong and I'll be paying for it for the rest of my life.”

He shattered his left heel, snapped his right and the rehab road was long.

2023 was “a complete write-off” for Jason, who is a local carpenter.

He was in a wheelchair for three months, on crutches for two-and-a-half months and walking with a cane for ages after that.

“I was off work for 12 months. Even when I went back to work I was only able to do short bursts. I couldn't do ladders or get up in a roof,” he says.

“When you break your heels, which I learnt, you lose all your balance. I've been working to regain balance. I'll never get it back in my left foot because I damaged it so badly.”

The loss of mobility and work took Jason to some dark places.

“My mental health really suffered. I stopped dong the things that I loved, playing music, riding bikes.”

As often happens, things got worse before they got better.

“I got drunk and crashed my car, celebrating after working three days straight. That was the worst moment of my life, telling my wife and my daughter.”

After the crash, it wasn’t possible to maintain the front that he had it all under control.

Jason’s wife, Leonie, pushed him to get help.

“Luckily, I have an amazing wife.”

Taking those initial steps are hard. Calling doctors, saying the painful stuff out loud and repeating your very personal story until you connect with someone who can help.

“It feels like you’re calling the tax office, or the council. By the eight call you’re finally stating to get somewhere,” Jason says.

“But it's like anything in life — the hardest part is getting started. Once you get going, it's amazing and you’re like, ‘why didn't I do this 20 years ago?’”

He says that without the help of professionals, friends and family, he wouldn’t be here today.

Jason has since quit drinking.

"I am not ashamed to say I was using alcohol to make my head right. It didn't work."

Losing his license forced him to dust off his push bike.

“I didn't want to punish my wife. I was like, ‘I'm going to be self sufficient.’”

Riding back and forth from Yapeen to Castlemaine meant he got fit again, and started thinking about going on adventures and giving back to all the people who helped get him back on track.

“We live in Yapeen. Yeppoon to Yapeen had a nice ring to it,” Jason says.

That’s Yeppoon, Queensland. A 2,000-km ride from Yapeen.

Jason has teamed up with the tradie mental health charity HALT. He’s raising money to help HALT deliver a mental health program for trade apprentices at TAFES.

“Tradies, blue collar workers, they're the heart of any community. We've got to take care of them,” Jason says.

Jason is now two weeks into his ride and I’ve been keeping up with the road diaries he shares on Instagram. He's been hit with rain, floods and bike issues.

Jason called in to talk to us on The Nugget radio show on MainFM to catch us up on the trek that has turned into an odyssey.

"I've been literally dragged out of floods. Just out of Bundaburg, QLD, I got cornered and locked in to flood waters," Jason says. "This awesome bloke, Keith, pulled up in his big rig and he threw me in the back and drove the through about 4 kms of an inland ocean."

The people he has met along the way think he's absolutely nuts - and inspiring. Naturally, everyone wants to help.

"I've met heaps and heaps of people. This lovely lady, Vicki, when I was at the Moonie truck stop she gave me $15 for a feed because she thought I needed one because I was too skinny."

He's been staying at caravan parks every few days to shower and freshen up. Other nights have been less comfortable.

"In Lowmead, QLD, I stayed on a park bench because it was just pouring rain and my tent was already wet so it was pointless setting it up."

Jason’s bike has taken a few hits: endless tire punctures, frozen gears, but he says his body and brain are holding up.

"The bum's a bit sore but the rest of the body's fine. I gave up booze seven or eight months ago. I'm off anti-inflammatories for the first time in 20 years. I lost so much weight. I have so much energy,” Jason says.

“Even just the challenges I've faced on the trip. Me, eight months ago? I wouldn't have dealt with this. And I've had plenty of challenges on this trip, physically and mentally, and I feel like I'm getting through it all right.”

Jason will arrive in Castlemaine on April 20 to a hero’s welcome. The first stop will be his wife Leonie’s Forest Creek Tattoo, which will be holding their own special fundraiser for HALT.

Leonie and a crew of tattooists will be offering special designs on the day and all proceeds will go to HALT.

“I’ll be getting my checkered flag tramp stamp,” says Jason, who is always joking - and at the same time, quite serious!

❀ Jurassic Park… Castlemaine? ❀

Nuggeteers, Amy and Shelley, with John Roebuck at MainFM

Jurassic Park Castlemaine Redux. What?

Some people in town have been following this wild project for years. Some are just hearing about it now, as major media coverage amped up ahead of Friday's premiere.

Here's the deal: A few local teachers were not having the best time at work. So they cooked up a project to take their mind off it. A shot-for-shot remake of the 1993 film, Jurassic Park.

Even crazier: They actually did it.

It took three years and pushed director John Roebuck to the edge, but they did it. The Castlemaine remake of Jurassic Park premieres today at the Theatre Royal.

"I finished about 6:00 PM, yesterday,” John said on Monday, when he joined us for The Nugget radio show on MainFM. (He squeezed us in after appearing on the Today Show and being interviewed by the ABC that morning).

“I am not much of a crier. I started uncontrollably sobbing when I finished watching the final thing through, not out of sentimentality or nostalgia. I think I've just been so burnt out for so long by it, it's crazy to think that it's over. I'm still processing it, I think.”

Tickets to see the remake quickly sold out and scammers have popped up selling fakes.

"It's funny, people have been contacting me, especially over the last couple of days to see if it will play in America or like if we can sort of release it to a wider audience. It's copyright infringement, so we definitely can't,” John says.

“I also kind of like the idea of putting heaps and heaps of effort into something very silly and pointless and it just playing over two days and … then it just disappears forever."

“I will never watch it ever again after this weekend."

The project started with six people, but grew as people caught wind of it. The final credits name 150 people, including a guy from Melbourne contributed Jurassic Park replica vehicles and an amatuer VFX guy in Texas who made the dinosaurs come to life.

"We didn't plan each shoot with a fine-toothed comb. I'd sort of watch it and be like, ok, these are the props we definitely need, that location will do, these are the vague shots that we need. Honestly, watching it through yesterday, it's remarkable how much of it looks pretty amazing,” John says.

"There are moments that will bother me for the rest of my life that don't look great, but it's weird how good it looks."

The film was shot at an array of iconic Castlemaine locations, including the Theatre Royal and Lot 19, plus Butterland in Newstead, local forests and more.

"I heard rumours about this tunnel system under Castlemaine, where they used to ferry prostitutes around in the gold rush. Friends of my brother-in-law own Warm Store and they said, 'we've got this bunker under there where the tunnel's been blocked up, but the bunker is still there.'

“So, we filmed down there. You walk downstairs into the basement of this store and it's like sort of going back into a gold mine."

Then they actually did film in a gold mine.

"I'm sure we weren't allowed to but, we did. It was a bit dangerous,” John says.

“There was a steep drop when you get about three to four metres into the mine and I was standing right in front of that drop with my hands up to stop the camera man falling in but if he pushed too hard we both would have fallen into the mine."

For all of us who were not balanced precariously in that mine and who did not spend three years remaking Jurassic Park - the story is a Castlemaine miracle. Wacky, creative and unbelievable. John has a different take.

"I think there's an element of existential despair … the last three years have been so intense I really just need to chill. It's taken me to the brink of my sanity a few times."

"The joy it seems to bring other people has sustained me. By the time I realized I wasn't really enjoying myself, because it was too gargantuan, it was too late to not do it, because I would be letting other people down."

John says he’s most pumped about the fact that his wife has given him Sunday off parenting. “So, I'm going to get pretty drunk on Saturday night.”

And he has no plans to make another film.

“Oh, God, no. I'm gonna focus on raising my very, very beautiful one-and-a-half year old daughter. It's so hard having a baby while you've got Jurassic Park in the back of your head. So, I'm looking forward to enjoying being a dad.”

And never watching Jurassic Park again.

"I want to put it on a USB in a box and bury it somewhere in the Goldfields so it will get found by sleuths or aliens in 5,000 years time and they won't know what to do with it."

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

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Hi! Kindly drop me a line at [email protected] to let me know:

  • if you scored a ticket to see Jurassic Park Castlemaine Redux and your review of the film, once you’ve seen it,

    all about your upcoming event, and

  • who I should interview next. xx