Community causes – volunteer rural firefighters

Fundraising for the Community

Wattle days, wattle badges and sprigs of fresh wattle have been used to raise funds to support help community causes since the First World War.

Volunteer rural fire fighters

In 2010 the Wattle Day Association began making badges by hand to sell to raise money for the volunteers of the local rural fire brigades. Two years later, with a grant from the Bendigo Community Bank, we were able to pay Dandy Designs Pty in Sydney to make the badges.

Kate Betts & Terry Fewtrell with a helmut-full of badges to raise funds

Read more about the Bendigo Bank support for the Wattle Day Association’s fundraising…

This fund raising for the ACT’s volunteer firefighters was supported by the Bendigo Community Bank with funding in 2012 & 2013.

Launch of the new partnership between the Bendigo Community Bank, the Wattle Day Association and the ACT Rural Fire brigades at the Curtin shops, Canberra in 2012.

Here are the badges ready for sale to raise funds for volunteers firefighters.

All of the Wattle Day Association’s wattle Day badge designs from 2000 – 2021 are shown here.

Elizabeth and Randall Falkiner raise funds at a wattle-themed raffle
for the ACT Rural Fire Brigades at the Wattle Day Dinner held at the
Teatro Vivaldi Restaurant (2013)

People buying wattle sprigs from Maggi Moore’s stall, Tasmania (probably Hobart) on Wattle Day in 1914.

Searle, E. W. (1914). [Wattle Day, Maggie Moore’s stall, 1914 [Tasmania] Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-142150911

And over a century later, here’s a wattle stall held by the Wattle Day Association at the National Arboretum Canberra (2015)

Fiona Eaton hands out a fresh sprig of wattle to a visitor
to the Arboretum’s Village Centre Photo: S.D.Searle