By Raquel Mustillo
MILLICENT Community Learning Centre students are on a mission to ignite the town’s firewood market by transforming donated pallets into kindling.
Students have been keeping Millicent residents warm by splitting wood and bundling it up as part of a fundraiser for the facility.
Millicent Community Learning Centre manager Gemma Winterborn said students process the kindling each Wednesday before bagging it up and selling it for $7 at Foster’s Foodland.
Ms Winterborn said the centre retained a majority of the profits, which has helped facilitate the purchase of power tools.
“We were at a point we needed to consider whether we could keep the construction program going because of the cost of tools,” she said.
“It’s very expensive to buy a drill and a drill kit and there are things that needing to be replaced.
“We had a chat to Dave Foster who said he would be happy to sell the kindling bags, keep $2 and give the rest of the money back to the centre.
“We have also decided to donate some of the remaining funds we have to one of the animal welfare centres and the students are keen see some of the money go to the Duck-A-Roo Wildlife Sanctuary at Beachport.”
Ms Winterborn said a rigorous safety and training schedule was implemented ahead of the project, which requires students using chainsaws and axes to cut and split wood.
She said students have learnt several new skills, including health and safety requirements and machinery use, with one student devising a special piece of equipment to quickly pack kindling in bags.
Student Liam Thorneycroft constructed the sliding tray after stacking hundreds of pieces of wood into the 5kg bags by hand.
“It was taking a long time to bundle them by hand so I decided to try and have a look around for something to make it easier,” he said.
“I had a look around on YouTube and came up with the idea from there.
“You load up the kindling on the tray, put a bag around the tray and there is a lever you unlock to lift the tray up.
“When you lift the tray up, the kindling slides in which is way easier and quicker than doing it by hand.”
