My name is Azelene Williams, mother of 1, wife of an awesome husband. One morning I woke up and turned my TV on. What was on was not a beautiful picture, but brought tears to my eyes. I knew I needed to help, but didn't know where to start or what to do. Well, the first thing I did after a couple of hours was to ask my husband to cancel our Bali trip. See I am turning 40 on the 23rd of January and
was supposed to fly to Bali with my husband and daughter, to celebrate my 40th birthday there, the week before that I would have had a massive party at my house with all my friends. But something made me stop; I was not able to picture myself next to a swimming pool with an ice-cold drink in my hand with, horror playing off in a place called Tasmania. A place I've never even been to before. As an x South African that lived in the middle east for almost five years and only been living in Australia on a visa (PR in progress) I felt sick to my stomach seeing these flames tearing houses apart, then streets, then neighbourhoods and then almost an entire town. No, I don't care that I am not an Australian, I don't have to be one to help. The fact that I am allowed to live in this wonderful country gave me the desire to help, and that's just what I'm going to do. My husband shook his head and replied with "If that makes you happy you have our support, we can go to Tasmania". Then I decided to open this FB page basically to share with friends and family to see if I could get donations together to take with me. Well, the next moment, my page got shared, and heaps of people got involved. So much so, as where I am sitting tonight, my entire living area is under Donations, donations from people all over Perth and other parts of WA. People that have family in Tassie that wanted to do something and couldn't. People that had things to give away but found it hard to part from it, and got closure donating stuff to me to directly get to the people in Tasmania that need it, and not work through a organisation. Now, this all started the 6th of January 2013 when I opened this page. Well, now I am almost flying to Hobart. Thanks to my husband that understands me, I will be flying to Hobart the 21st and spend time there till the 27th of January. There I will organise the end destination of all the Donations People in WA helped me to get in, and I will be arranging with people to get it directly to the people that need it the most. I want to thank everybody that is involved at this stage for your help, support and constant messages. It's this support I get from you that's helping me making a massive success out of this Donation Drive. Keep your eye on the page to see where we go from here. There are two things that I want to get out of this experience:
1. To make a difference directly to people in need.
2. To teach my daughter to appreciate not just life, but also what she has in life. Tomorrow might never look the same.
