Fruit boxes packed with thousands of donated books rise to the ceiling of Ballarat East Rotary’s storage shed at Mitchell Park.
Throughout the year volunteers pack what amounts to about 15,000 books into banana and apple boxes for the annual Ballarat Big Book Bonanza.
“This is our major project, we get them donated to us from schools, libraries – this is a year round process,” Ballarat East Rotary special projects director John Olsen said.
“We send a lot of school goods, library books, computers overseas particularly to Fiji and Vanuatu.
“We put it into containers and each container will cost us $3000 to $4000 just to send.”
Ballarat East Rotary works with Rotary in Geelong to send about a dozen containers full of goods a year overseas.
They also support local and national organisations and causes.
Ballarat Big Bonanza is on Saturday, October 15 and Sunday, October 16 from 9am to 4pm at St Andrews Uniting Hall
Jessica Black
Ballarat journalist.
Ballarat journalist.
