Ruffy community hub volunteers Colleen Furlanetto, Jacqui Hagen, Felicity Sloman, Anne Douglas and Olga Hill in the public hall’s kitchen with the large commercial stove that’s inconveniently on its last legs.
Photo by
Bree Harding
The Ruffy Public Hall was never designed to handle the traffic that has passed through its doors in the past three weeks and will continue to pass through for months to come.
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When it’s all over, the hall will need the same kind of tender loving care that is currently being dispensed unconditionally from within it, for its own recovery.
But before that, while it’s still the much-needed community hub for the people of Ruffy and surrounds in the wake of the devastating Longwood bushfire that destroyed all but two buildings in Ruffy’s main street and more than 100 in the wider Strathbogie Shire, it is in desperate need of a new stove.
Breakfast, lunch and around a hundred dinners are being provided every day for those who need them.
There is someone volunteering in the kitchen at all times to ensure, at the very least, displaced residents’ stomachs are not empty while they’re dealing with the fallout from the devastation.
But volunteers are battling with an ageing stove that’s on the blink.
With no capacity to fundraise for a new appliance at the moment — people power and dollars are being channelled where they’re most-needed first — the temperamental, yet still essential, stove is causing frustration.
“We are absolutely desperate for a new stove,” hub volunteer Felicity Sloman said.
The kitchen volunteers are hoping someone might cook up a plan to donate a stove to the hub like they did the two washing machines and dryer the hub gratefully took receipt of recently.
The makeshift laundry was up and running within five hours.
Photo by
Bree Harding
Volunteers converted a small unused shed behind the public hall into a free, communal laundry for locals.
The idea had been suggested at 10am, when the powerless shed without plumbing was full of rubbish, and by 3pm that same day, the first load of sudsy washing was spinning around in the tub.
“We’re a very resourceful community,” Ms Sloman said.
“It’s a great example of what you can do without having to deal with ordering it and going through bureaucracy.
“George (Noye, a Ruffy local and the town’s CFA captain) rang his plumber mate and voila, as they say.”
So can a stove materialise out of thin air?
Or perhaps out of one of the trailer loads of aid winding its way up the Longwood-Ruffy Rd each day.
If you can help our fire-affected neighbours with this request, please do.
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