By DANE LILLINGSTONE
THE Warwick Warriors Woodcutters attended Mount Gordon last week for a good old-fashioned bush tucker lunch with the students.
Jaffle irons in half barrel drums, cheerio’s, billy tea and damper were on offer as students met the members of the Woodcutters where member Johno Felton gave them a speech about the dangers of drugs and the importance of respect.
Mr Felton said the Woodcutters group came about through mutual interests.
“We all we used to go and just cut loads of wood, and we thought we all love these days, why don’t we just form a little group,” he said.
“We just like going out sitting in the bush, setting up our chairs, lighting up a fire and doing our billy tea and damper and we cut up a load of wood and we raffle it. With those proceeds, we give it to charity. We’re all that stage in our lives when we wanna give something back. So we give something back.”
Mr Felton said they helped out anyone who’s doing it a bit tough from Mount Gordon to anyone who’s struggling.
“(We help) If there’s a veteran in trouble or someone in need or if someone needs a load of wood, or whatever.”
The group is an exclusive one with Mr Felton saying they hand pick their members.
“There are only 10 (in the group). The criteria is you’ve got to be a veteran, served in the military, like the bush and be a fair dinkum bloke,” he said.
“Probably 80 per cent of us are veterans suffering battle stress or PTSD, we call it battle stress.”
“One of them came down in a chopper crash, lost a couple of his mates.”
Their current plans are to have a new memorial in Leslie Park.
“We have a veteran from one of those campaigns doing up a draft copy of a memorial to go up in Leslie Park,” he said.
“We’ve wrote our expression of interest. At the moment, he’s coming up with the draft copy of the proposal. It’ll take a few years.”
“There’s those sandstone blocks you’ll usually see when a bridge is opened, with a plaque or something but we want something with the wow factor that will stand out.”
Mr Felton would also like to remind anyone with spare or extra food who would like to donate it to charity that it can be dropped to the Southern Free Times office at Shop 6/70 Fitzroy Street, Warwick, anytime between 9am-5pm until Friday 31 July.
