The Glen Innes Opportunity Shop has figured out a way to give the same dollar twice, with the town's unique locally-owned Op Shop now selling to the army sleeping bags donated to it by the RFS.
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For months last year hundreds of RFS and other firefighting services from around Australia camped at Glen Innes' Mead Park in a temporary tent village, as the volunteer heroes battled hundreds of blazes across our region.
Each volunteer was issued with a sleeping bag, a doona and a pillow.
Over the course of the at times desperate months-long battle, their backlog of supplies piled up.
Glen's Opportunity Shop, which is one of a handful of locally-run and owned op shops still surviving in Australia, stepped up to help them out.
It turned out to be an enormous job
But after a massive effort team leader Joan Jones and her husband Barry managed to transport the hundreds of items of linen to the Red Flag shop on Lang Street.
The shop has been selling the enormous haul ever since; months on they have yet to run out.
"A lot were bought around Christmas-time for camping, for presents and for people that were in the fires," said Op Shop volunteer Joy Woods
"Now that the army are here to help with the fire (recovery) and we've got this nice cold weather that they weren't expecting a few of them have been in this morning buying the RFS stuff.
"And they said probably when we leave you'll be getting it all back.
"It's the gift that keeps on giving."
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One common mistake donors to the Op Shop make, she said, is giving soiled or unsaleable goods.
Despite all the RFS volunteers went through battling out-on-control blazes last year their donated linen was immaculate.
"It's a testament to the professionalism of these people who were working long days in awful conditions and at the end of it - it's spick and span."
It's been a really good money spinner for the Op Shop, she said - and every red cent of profit goes back to the community in the form of grants.
The Op Shop still has Oz Trail single sleeping bags for sale at $12.00 with single doonas selling at $3.00. The pillows have sold out.
The shop donated some $176,000 in 2018, with organisations like the high school, the Deepwater and district radio and the Glen Innes army cadets among well over a dozen community organisations that have received support
Op Shop volunteers were treated to an afternoon tea about one of their community recipients, the Showground Trust, on Sunday February 2. Donations by the Op Shop have assisted the Showground Trust to conduct repairs to the beautiful historic Old Pavilion.