“..well people often ask when I got involved in this. It goes back 20 years when I saw a vision on TV of starving cattle and I had heard from an old cocky that starving cattle would eat sugar cane tops, here we are here in this area burning them, so long story short and lots of organising and pleading cane farmers agreed and we brought balers over from west. Eventually the chairman of Aust. Post rang and offered a semi-trailer to transport the bales. I had to organise where this fodder would go. This is in the days before computers and I didn’t have a mobile. Then as the harvest got closer to Christmas I thought we could put Christmas boxes in too and I’ve continued with the hampers, toys and gifts. There’s always a drought somewhere, North, down South, the Riverina, west out to Bourke. Thanks to a wonderful freight company in Tamworth for the transport. Its all loaded on pallets and I decide where it needs to through The Rural Financial Counselling Service. They cover a huge area and know who’s doing it tough. There can be 150kms between farms. Sometimes the flying Padre delivered the parcels. It was like Santa arriving in his little plane.”
Footnote – Anne is also a busy Knitting Nanna, is a young 76 and has no intention of stopping her awesome work.