Lynn

I left Lismore for a while, went nursing and came back here to work in St Vincent’s Hospital for 28 years. I had to leave for medical reasons. I found myself doing nothing and I was a blood donor so I asked about volunteering at the Blood Bank. That led onto being asked to volunteer in the Red Cross tea rooms one day a month. That was 12 years ago and at that time I knew nothing about the tea rooms. Next thing I know Betty Morton, the President at the time asked me if I could be her Vice President. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. 12 months later she wanted me to take over the President position. I stayed in that position for 9 years. I needed a break so now Rhonda Moule is President and I am back in the Vice President role.

 

I became really involved with Red Cross, I learnt all I could about the organisation. The reason I got involved with Red Cross is, it’s not political and they accept everybody. I tell people if they come in the tea rooms you can believe in what you want to believe but keep it all out on the street. I don’t care what religion, race, sexual preference or who you vote for, it doesn’t come into the tea rooms. I like that part of it.

The main thing in Red Cross is supporting people in need. In the beginning it was helping people on the battlefield. It didn’t matter which side you were on. The wounded were on the field, they helped both sides. It’s still the same overseas now. Getting in and helping people in need.

 

Thankfully we are at peace in this country and we have a lot of programs here. One is Telecross which is a 5 minute phone call every morning to a family or person registered with Red Cross and they get a phone call to make sure they are ok. They also have Tele chat. These phone calls could be from 15 mins to half hour for people who are isolated and have nobody. That sort of thing really helps people. Then there’s Emergency services which is mainly for floods in this area. The Red Cross manages the evacuation centre for people who have to leave their homes. Red Cross look after them until they can be resettled. We still have people affected by that flood. People don’t realise it’s still going on.

 

The flood came higher than was expected. We did lift things up. It wasn’t high enough. It shattered me completely. I just broke down and it’s not like me. We had been working on the tea rooms building it up for a long time and it was all gone just like that. We lost so much, we saved and cleaned what we could but luckily we did have insurance and most people didn’t have insurance. You have to be in a flood like that to understand it, the look of it, the smell, the destruction of it. It took 6 months but the plus side is it’s all looking clean and new. We lost a lot of volunteers at that time too because they were idle. We had to replace nearly everything. We bought all we needed in Lismore bar the tables and chairs. Everything else we bought locally. I’ve been through all the floods but this one to me was the worst.

 

I think the tea rooms are important both to the Red Cross and to the community. So many of our customers are so happy to have us back. We can always take on more volunteers. We can offer one day a month or one day a week. If people don’t want to work in the shop they can become a member and we volunteer other things. We gift wrap at the Lismore Square and we do other fundraising activities. The second biggest fundraiser is the gift wrapping. Each year it grows and the Square do support us. They supply $2,000 worth of paper. It’s a gold coin donation and the best we’ve done is over $1,000 in one day. That’s a lot of presents.

 

Volunteering isn’t just about you working, you really do benefit from it. You are doing something for others and you’re also being active. You can’t get up in the morning and decide to do nothing if you have a choice. You have to do something with your life.”