Nancy Brennan has welcomed community support for our Aussie soldiers. 74234 Picture: JOE MASTROIANNI
By XAVIER SMERDON
A WYNDHAM Vale woman with a plan to help Australia’s serving troops in Afghanistan has been blown away by the support she has received from the community.
Nancy Brennan from the Country Womens Association decided to help knit and send beanies and gloves to the Middle East for the Australian troops to wear after hearing of a lady who would send some to her son only to have him constantly ask for more because he was giving them to his fellow soldiers.
She originally fell short of the number required after discovering there were almost 1500 diggers to cater for.
She called radio station 3AW and asked Neil Mitchell to help her put the call out for knitters.
Within a few short weeks her house was full of donations from all over Australia and even overseas.
She soon had more than 5000 beanies, 1000 scarves and 1000 fingerless gloves.
“The support has been marvellous,” Ms Brennan told Star.
“The original idea was to send one beanie to every soldier. We couldn’t just send 50 or 100 because that would be like giving kids a bag of lollies with only three lollies in it when there is 30 kids in the room.”
Ms Brennan said she did not expect so many people would get behind her cause.
“It’s been quite an experience. It was quite a good project that just got a bit out of control,” she said.
“It was like an acorn that grew into an oak tree.”
Ms Brennan’s caravan was full of boxes of the knitted gems which were sent off to the army last week.
The excess items that were not suitable for soldiers to wear will now be given to charity groups to distribute to the homeless and other disadvantaged people in Melbourne.
Ms Brennan thanked everyone that had taken the time to get involved in the project.
