A home away from home for the Orange Men’s Shed

Pat Egan, Ray Flynn, Chuck Frame and Hugh Laird with the new ‘mud kitchen’ they’ve built for the Orange and District Early Education Program

It has been nearly 18 months since an arson attack forced the Orange Men’s Shed out of their woodworking rooms at Lucknow. Despite the lengthy delay in rebuilding (and a global pandemic) the men are pushing ahead at their temporary home at ‘Riverside’ part of the former Bloomfield Hospital.

“We got this building on a temporary basis on a good deal too,” said member Chuck Frame, who helped line up the temporary accommodation, “but hopefully we can get back their soon.”

“We've been here 12 months now and we do miss it out there,” added Men’s Shed Chairman Hugh Laird, “because it is on the highway and anything we used to make we'd put it out on a display out the front and we sold everything!

“Out here we are a little isolated, but I have to say it has been a good move because we are back in business…  we are still really in limbo down there, and if we had to hang around much longer we might have folded.”

But the Orange Men’s Shed is open as it always was (although at a different location) 9.30am to 3pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, with members stopping by to work on their projects or just for a chat.

“Tuesday morning is our big social event where we will have 20 or 22 out here and half of those are blokes who just come out for morning tea one day a week and have a bit of a social event,” said Hugh, who has been busy knocking up a ‘mud kitchen’ for a local preschool.

“They came to us with a picture, said, ‘can you built it.’ I said ‘yep.’ so here it is. It’s mainly from pallets, but we had some timber given to us and we've planed that up to make it look a bit decent. They didn't want it to be too fancy, they wanted it to be reasonable rustic and all-weather, so the kids can get to it and play havoc with it I should imagine.”

Projects like the mud kitchen are just the way the Orange Men’s Shed likes to help out the community.

“We have a few jobs a bit of stuff on the go,” said Hugh. “I suppose in many ways we support our community, not necessarily in doing community projects, but we will make something for a community project on a very cheap basis, cheaper than you could buy it.”

Anyone interested in joining the Orange Men’s Shed should stop by any Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, see what they do and maybe learn something new.

“Blokes here are happy to help other blokes,” said Chuck. “Sit down and show you how to do it.”

“Yeah,” said Hugh. “We've got some blokes who’ve never touched woodwork in their life and some bokes never touched metal work in their life, but they are sort of adapting and getting a few skills.”