By Brendan Rees
In the midst of a pandemic, community spirit has spread to Cranbourne after a company put its hand up to help carry out some repair work for the Cranbourne Food Truck.
The Cranbourne Regional Uniting Church recently put a callout on Facebook looking for a community organisation or individual undertake the works – with staff at Ecokote in Hallam happy to oblige.
The truck has remained off the road until further notice to stop the potential spread of coronavirus – which volunteers have described as a “very, very difficult situation” as the truck goes out four nights a week to provide meals to the needy and disadvantaged.
The Food Truck’s administrator Chris Marsh expressed her relief with Ecokote stepping up to help and for a price “far less than what we expected”.
“Doing it now means that we can it all fixed and it’s not going to impact on our normal services when we do go back,” she said.
Ms Marsh said the truck was starting to show some wear and tear with rust creeping into the body.
“They’ll be cutting out the rust and then give it another coat of paint and then hopefully that’s it.
“The rust had eaten through the cabin roof so the rain was actually getting into the cabin.”
The Food Truck, which its volunteers have been the recipient of multi-Australia Day awards and a 2018 Premier’s volunteer champions teamwork award, was purchased second hand in 2011 as an old fire truck from Narre Warren fire brigade.
Meanwhile, volunteers have been taking out the truck for an occasional drive to keep the engine and battery “ticking over”.
