Ben competing at the 2019 Festival of British Eventing
I am sure you are all very aware of the extreme fires that have been devastating Australia over the past few months. Many homes, properties, animals and unfortunately lives have been taken. It is truly horrific.
Some of you may already know, as well as Eventing, running my livery yard and coaching I am also a retained fire fighter for the West Sussex Fire & Rescue service. I offer 80 hours a week to my community which covers all aspects of fires, road traffic collisions, rescues and recently flooding. And I get to drive the truck, fast!!
Well, of course I wanted to try and help my fellow Australians so I looked into what I could do and found T2T.
T2T London is an organisation which is working hard to set up the deployment of UK fire fighters to Australia to help support communities affected by the devastation. It offers animal rescue and humanitarian relief, following along after the fires for the clean-up operations and helping to restructure the affected areas.
Finding this, I signed up immediately. I then had to wait a few weeks before I received the phone call to inform me of confirmation of deployment and yes, I am on the list. We are currently now waiting to get the final pieces in place before we are deployed.
The effect of the fires has devastated so many people’s lives I feel this is only a small gesture however I will be able to help no doubt meet some amazing people.
January 26th is Australia Day and there are some amazing fund-raising Sausage Sizzles and Rider Demos going on around the UK so please look out for these and support them if you can.
