PRESIDENT of the Rotary Club of Dubbo Jeannette Miller hopes luck follows her to the $400,000 Country Championships final at the Royal Randwick racecourse on Saturday.
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If it does the club will have $5000 more to put towards the purchase of life-saving equipment for the Emergency Department of Dubbo Hospital.
At the Western Districts Country Championships qualifier in Dubbo this month, Mrs Miller backed Something Borrowed because its jockey Aaron Bullock's silks exhibited the colours of Rotary International.
Something Borrowed won the race and with runner-up Not A Shadow will race in Saturday's final.
Mrs Miller will be "emotional" on race day knowing a win by either horse could significantly boost the club's efforts to raise $20,000 for Sonosite ultrasound equipment at the ED.
The club could collect $5000 as part of the TAB Editors' Challenge run in conjunction with the Country Championships.
Editors of Fairfax Media publications in communities that have hosted the qualifiers have chosen charities to receive the cash, should winning horses from the local races be first past the post.
Daily Liberal editor Brian O'Flaherty picked the club's "ED Project" after hearing of its value to staff and patients.
ED operations manager Clint Grose reports that almost a quarter of the 90 people treated in the department each day would benefit from the modern, portable and laptop-looking ultrasound machine.
A former Australian Army trauma nurse, who spent seven months in Afghanistan, Mr Grose has first-hand experience of the new equipment that would operate at bedsides across the ED.
The operations manager said its wide-ranging use included the detection of internal bleeding in "resuscitation" patients brought in by ambulance and veins in the elderly and young "when we need to put in a needle".
"It speeds up diagnoses and treatment," Mr Grose.
Currently the ED makes do with a 12-year-old ultrasound machine that is "outdated, half the size of a bed, cumbersome and slow to set up".
Mr Grose has acknowledged that the state government "doesn't have unlimited funds" when thanking the club for its support.
Mrs Miller said the theme of the Rotary year 2015/2016 was Be a Gift to the World.
"In providing this machine to the hospital we would be giving a great gift to the western area of NSW," she said.
Currently the club has $6100 in the ED Project kitty.
An initiative of Racing NSW, the Country Championships has the support of the state government. The event aims to promote racing in country areas and ensure horses from across the state are part of the Championships in Sydney in the autumn.
