Dominic Cansdale: Meet Edna Gorton. She's just celebrated that big birthday milestone and she still volunteers seven hours a day, six days a week at a beautiful little op shop in the Tweed Shire.
Edna Gorton: So if I'm at home, what would I be doing? Just sitting at home? You know, I hear the staff are fantastic. They are really lovely.
Dominic Cansdale: Inside her shop are trinkets and tools, furniture and clothes and just the cutest array of window decorations. But it's about so much more than a cheap deal.
Edna Gorton: And all the money goes to Wedgetail, our hospice for terminally ill patients. And we don't get any government assistance. This shop keeps it going. And anyone can go there. It's all free. And friends, relatives can go and stay and they get looked after, fed. And it's all free. But the shop keeps it going.
Dominic Cansdale: Edna has been with the op shop for 18 years.
Edna Gorton: The customers, we've got some customers who come in every day just for a talk. And they just they're quite happy. It's just somewhere that they can come. Or they might even come sometimes. I'll meet you at, call it the Edna's shop, which is I'll meet you at Edna's shop. So and they stop here, have a talk, buy something, maybe yes or no. And away they go. And it's just it's just really my life. And I love it.
Dominic Cansdale: As I mosey around the op shop, trying on jackets and checking out random 35 year old blenders, I munch on a delicious apricot slice offered up by one of the other volunteers.
Edna Gorton: The only in the other room she made these. We have so many cakes here.
Dominic Cansdale: I realize you just can't help but run into adoring locals.
Jemima Hynes: Edna is an incredibly accepting and kind and funny woman. She brings and beautiful,
Jemima Hynes: incredibly giving. And for this community,
Jemima Hynes: she just has opened her heart. Like, I don't think there's been a day that I've come in here and she hasn't been. Amazing. Just an amazing woman. The whole community would be lost without her and the palliative care wouldn't be even half as good. Since I was a little one, coming into the op shop with my mom and getting my my clothes. This is all op shop. This is an op shop clothes. Stunning. Absolutely breathtaking. Palliative care, palliative care mama. Right here. A dollar baby. A dollar.
Dominic Cansdale: But for humble Edna, it's always just about the op shop.
Edna Gorton: People can just come in and say, like a lady comes to the door now and say, you know, have you done this thing before? They say no. You know, you just come in and do what you like. And we just ask their name and say, when would you like to start? And that's how the girls are all here.
