Anyone with a spare $50,000 to hand over to David Roach can save the New England Volunteer Air Transport service.
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NEVAT has been limping along for 12 months since it first signalled it couldn’t carry on without a significant grant.
President David Roach knows he needs to wind it up – but he’s an optimist.
“If we could find $50,000 we’d be up and running immediately,’’ he said on Thursday.
Mr Roach believes National MPs Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister, and Adam Marshall, State Member for Northern Tablelands, could do more to assist the service.
“We received $50,000 two years in a row from the federal government under Labor but that money stopped when the Liberal Party came to power and we’ve struggled ever since,’’ Mr Roach said.
“We’re not political. If Barnaby came up with some money we’d praise him, too.”
Mr Roach posted a message on NEVAT’s Facebook page this week saying a last remaining operational hope had come to an end.
Hopes of a community grant from Greater Newcastle had been dashed.
Frustratingly, no reasons are ever given for why a group doesn’t get a grant.
“We have tried every possible avenue over the past 12 months or so to remain an active and helpful part of the community, however our efforts have amounted to virtually little,’’ Mr Roach said.
He posted that the next NEVAT meeting would be to close the service and its operations. -but that meeting hasn’t actually been gazetted yet.
He thinks he should call the committee together and formally disband – but then again: “Never give up, isn’t that what the Dalai Lama says?”
He said 753 people had been flown to medical appointment in about 530 flights over the last ten years.
People had been picked up from airstrips in Glen Innes, Moree, Warialda, Bingara.
“Not a lot of people even know that Bingara has an airstrip,’’ Mr Roach said.
The plane hasn’t flown this year but is being maintained.
