The Spirit of Australians

Jam tart to rescue in bushfires relief

• Marika Dobbin
• March 6, 2009

Birralee Primary School students join the jam effort. Photo: Penny Stephens

HOBART mother Jenny Mazzella was making red currant jam for her weekly market stall when she first heard of the bushfires savaging Victoria.

Having little money to donate, Ms Mazzella, a self-described homemaker and "jam tart", decided to use her small commercial kitchen to help raise funds.

Her husband, Gennaro, phoned around local orchards and within the hour had 600 kilograms of donated apricots and 400 of strawberries.

Jam Aid began as a Mazzella family operation, but soon consumed their suburb of Kingston and then wider Tasmania, with primary school children collecting 1000 kilograms of sugar from the pantries of family, neighbours and friends.

The fruit was stored at a seafood processing plant, before students at Calvin Christian secondary school turned their hands to stoning apricots and hulling strawberries.

"My husband supervised all the volunteers who came from all over to help cook and then we had to get people to wash the jars and label them and store it in suburban garages all over the state," Ms Mazzella said.

"Because there's not a lot of money in Tassie and people have some scepticism about where their donated dollar goes, they have an ache to contribute in a real way."

More than 5000 jars of jam have been made so far, with sales raising $40,000. The operation is still expanding and this week crossed Bass Strait.

After Ms Mazzella was interviewed on ABC radio, a pilot flew his small plane from northern Tasmania to Hobart to pick up 2000 jars and take them to Devonport to be loaded onto the Spirit of Tasmania.

Ms Mazzella followed and is staying at a friend's house in Doncaster. Yesterday she organised for students at Birralee Primary School to make labels.

Principal Ashley Ryan said the students were motivated by the death in the Steels Creek fires of integration aid Charm Ahern, who worked at the school, and her husband, Leigh.

The freshly labelled jam is on sale today at Prahran Market and on Saturday shoppers will be able to sponsor a jar to go to a relief centre, sending it off with a personal note of support.

"It's not about jam, it's about the message; it comes from the heart of the home and the heart of the community."

Ms Mazzella will head home on Sunday, where a fresh batch of 2000 kilos of apricots has just arrived.