Last weekend, 25th October, Jill went on a visit to Lightning Ridge with Gosford North and Erina Clubs. The trip was to hand over money raised by all the Central Coast Rotary Clubs to help support the farmers in this heavily drought ridden area of New South Wales.
On the tourist trail especially for the gem opals, the town has good restaurants and cafes, motels and camp sites, a large supermarket, and four churches. Opal miners live either in the town, or on their 'leases', just out of town, in anything from corrugated iron humpies, to stone built castles, and everything in between. Farms surround the town, currently in this drought with large paddocks acting as dust bowls, ploughed fields waiting for rain, or a small number of cattle, surviving on donated hay. It must be a very different sight when rain is more regular.
While Gosford North Rotary itself has raised a separate, significant amount of money from their 'wheel' activity at Erina shopping centre, as well as BBQs for the Council, and bucket rattling, we were all able to give money to the Rotary Club there. The Lightning Ridge Rotary Club fund and arrange, from local businesses, hampers for farming families, especially over Christmas. Hampers such as donated cakes and biscuits, jams and pickles, toiletries and household goods etc. They also arrange with the local pharmacy, to subsidise essential prescriptions for struggling families. The Club also supports students from the High School in their efforts to raise money to travel abroad, next year to Nepal.
