By BLAKE METCALF-HOLT
LOCAL motorcycle club, Us & Them Tourers carried out another successful initiative, donating to Carry On Café, Morwell.
More than $1000 was donated to the veteran support business. Also operating as a supporting service for the local food bank, the proceeds will help provide more free meals to both regular veterans that visit and those that come through every now and again.
Café Manager, Kerry Hamley was thankful for the motorcycle club’s now yearly contribution.
“The donations are amazing, that helps a long way with food,” she said.
“We probably give away maybe 15-20 meals to people each week and if we can branch that out even further we would like to do that.”
Us & Them Tourers Social Motorcycle Club hold an annual poker run raffle the weekend before Melbourne Cup, which again saw people dig deep knowing where the money was going to.
Club president Dave Watts said club members came from across Victoria, and even interstate.
“We have our local businesses that support us, they support us so that we can support them (Carry On Café),” he said.
“If it wasn’t for them and if it wasn’t for the biking community too, we wouldn’t be able to do this, but we do this because it’s local and that’s our number one thing.
“Our local communities are suffering so, (we’re) pretty passionate about it.
“This is something that brings us all together which is good.”
Local veteran Adrian Morley said the café offers genuine service which comes from staff truly caring for the wellbeing of people.
“Normally when you go somewhere it’s very official and bureaucratic and that sort of thing, but this is just informal which makes it a lot easier (if you’re) just walking off the street… it’s just an easy way for people to feel comfortable going in and sit down and have a cup of coffee,” he said.
Ms Hamley said the staff form strong relationships with the local veterans and regularly check in on them.
“You can tell that they need a hand so, we’ll come out and say ‘hey, what do you need help with?’ because a veteran won’t ask for help, they never ask for help and that’s the big thing I found working here as the manager is that you’ve got to be that one step ahead and look for signs that somebody’s doing it tough,” she said.
“Friendships have been formed here too. There’s been veterans that have come in and they haven’t had a lot of family support or they don’t have a family and the café has sort of become that family to them.
“We have a veteran that comes in every single day and has a coffee and that’s their time out every day.”
Carry On Cafe also has a volunteer base which is there to support veterans, as well as a welfare team for veterans to go to in times of help.
Mr Watts, who has been with the motorcycle club on and off since 1996, said the club was a place for people to find themselves from all walks of life.
“We’ve been around for a long time, not a lot of people know about us,” he said.
“We’ve got our own veterans in the club ourselves, we’ve got disabled people in the club, old people, young people, a wide variety of bikies, we don’t discriminate against anyone.
“It’s just something where we all want to find each other really, it’s just somewhere we go, some people don’t have bikes, they just come in the morning and have a coffee and go depending on where they’re at (during) life.”
