I remember when I first arrived in Geelong back in 2005 how desperate I was to become involved in some charity work.
My father had a soft spot for the Salvation Army, having been approached one day by them to give a young girl a job at Melbourne Grammar School. This young girl, had only a suitcase with her, no family to speak of, just the two Salvation Army representatives with her. Her name was Lilly.
Father took one look at Lilly and said, “Ok, I will give her accommodation, I will give her a job, but she then belongs to ME. His Austrian humour.
They left her with father and long story short, she was his best employee ever, and she also became my nanny and best friend.
It was his gratitude to the Salvation Army back then that left a door open in his heart. Every Christmas Eve “The Salvo’s” would turn up outside out house in South Yarra, and sing Christmas carols with their tambourines, drums, and really nothing else but magical voices to accompany them. Father of course tipsy by this time, would go out the front, grab a Tamborine off them and join in. It became part of a family ritual at Christmas.
It was Christmas back in 2005 when I arrived that took me back to these wonderful times. Thinking about Lilly and father of course, which prompted me to approach the Salvation Army in Geelong. I thought surely I could volunteer for Christmas. They surely had a lunch where they would feed the homeless.
Well they did. And I did volunteer. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to spend Christmas Day with people so deserving of my time in the kitchen, preparing and serving lunch to the homeless. When it was time for Santa to appear, you could see the beaming smiles on all the children’s faces as they lined up to get a gift from the man of the moment.
It was right at that moment, I saw Santa dig his hand into a huge bag and pull out lollies for each child. I thought to myself, surely we as a community can do better than a bag of lollies.
After this Christmas, sadly I fell very ill. Only two years ago, the thought of what I experienced that day came back to me. I had to do something, anything.
So a neighbours daughter told me about a thing called facebay that is on Facebook. Its where people sell things and give items away. I watched the site for a few weeks and decided to make contact with the person running it. I asked if I could place an advertisement to see if I could get people to donate a crocheted blanket to the homeless men at Samaritan House here in Moolap.
I couldn’t believe the response to my advertisement. I have people offering wool, offering beanies, gloves, and of course ladies offering to make blankets for me.
Last Christmas was the first time we had two Christmas trees at Sammy House and it had presents under them for the homeless men. They each got a crocheted or knitted blanket and some other little treats as well.
This got me thinking about the homeless children again. I thought if we can get people on board to donate blankets, maybe the women might like to make toys as well for the homeless children of Geelong.
Well again I appealed to peoples kindness and so far a few ladies have already donated 31 toys to my new charity “Happy Hookers”. But we need 225 in total.
We are on our way to meet our goal, but we need more people on board to help achieve our goal. I also need 20 blankets for the homeless men again at Christmas time and to date have a total of four.
If you would like to become part of this experience and have the time to donate to a very worthy cause, please make contact with me at ccrap@tooraktimesgeelong.com.au
Also please feel free to tell your friends who live in and around the Geelong area, the more the merrier.
Lets put huge smiles on that faces of those less fortunate, and with the way things are going with COVID, who knows what the homeless total is to date. We can all do our little bit.
I would also like to take this moment to say a special thank you to Kaye Ross, Kim Wood, Lisa Pepers, and Catherine Farrell for their contributions thus far.
For anyone wishing to join our Facebook group, its listed as
“Happy Hookers, it takes balls to knit”. You will see many many patterns for toys on the site, and all we ask is you donate one toy to the cause for access to all the patterns.
