Rotarian Bob Neich said the proceeds from the sale of the scrap lead inside the batteries were to be used to build a maternity unit at Dili in East Timor.

“They just cut the padlock into Bradley’s yard and they’ve moved them by hand, so they were there a long time,” Mr Neich said.

“It would have taken them a long time to move 350 batteries. The pallets are still there.

“It would have taken a massive trailer, because eight tonne is a lot of batteries, or otherwise they’ve backed a truck in, I’m not sure about that, but police have taken photographs of the tyre patterns.”

He said Rotary would now have to work twice as hard to replace the stolen funding for the maternity ward.

Mr Neich said Rotary had widely advertised the fact that it was collecting the batteries, so there were plenty of people who knew where they were. 

He thought the chances of finding the thieves was very low and appealed to the community for help.

“If anyone has seen a vehicle driving around late on Saturday night, we’d like to pass that on to the police. The police will pursue it, but there’s not a lot they can do, I guess.

“But there may be someone out there who has seen something.”

Inverell’s Inspector Rowan O’Brien said the person attending the yard about 10.30am on Sunday morning noticed the chain securing the gates had been cut.

“We‘ll certainly be making enquiries with business that process second-hand batteries,” Inspector O’Brien said.

“The community group that had been collecting them for over six months had made arrangements with a business to pick them up. 

“So we’ll touch base with that business to find out if there are any other firms in this area that are likely to take carriage of a large amount of second-hand batteries like that.”

Inspector O’Brien thought ongoing investigations would be confined to NSW at this stage. He said police needed any information the public could provide, no matter how small it might seem, to aid their enquiries.