“I turn 92 this June so I thought hey, maybe it’s time to sit back and have a rest.”
After completing hundreds of rounds as a volunteer for food service, Meals on Wheels, Friday will mark Roy’s last shift.
“It doesn’t seem like nine years,” Roy said.
“It’s just something I like doing and it’s a pattern for my particular week, different weeks I do different rounds.”
Roy alternates his schedule from Tuesdays and Wednesdays one week, to Tuesdays and Fridays the next – and says he’s only had about six days off over the nine years, except for the lockdown when deliveries stopped.
Shirley had cancer, as did his sister-in-law, so he spent most of his time as a caregiver, which left little time for cooking.
So Roy signed them up to get Meals on Wheels delivered, and when Shirley and his sister-in-law both passed away, he decided to volunteer.
Roy has a health problem that’s left scarring on his lungs, which means he can’t do much physical work, such as gardening or housework, so delivering meals has proved a nice alternative, as long as he doesn’t overdo it.
“I just like doing it, meeting different people because I’m a very solitary person,” Roy said. “It makes you conform to getting out and about instead of just sitting around and sort of vegetating.”
A Meals on Wheels volunteer who has known Roy for three years said she would often get chatting to him while they were waiting for the meals to arrive at the start of their round.
“He’s a very special person who worked very hard all his life and cared for others all his life,” she said.
She said Meals on Wheels was always looking for drivers and volunteers as good as Roy, with his friendly and helpful nature.
What made him such a great delivery driver was “just being Roy” and giving the time each week.
“Sometimes you’ll be delivering to a person for a couple of months,” he said. “There’s some now I’ve been delivering to for the last five or six years.”
Roy said the secret to a good delivery service is having a reliable car, something he can boast about with his red Toyota Fitz.
“People look out the window and see the little red car and know it’s me sometimes,” he said. “It does the job, I call it my little shopping basket.”
Each delivery varies depending on the needs of the person receiving the meal. Sometimes Roy will drop it at the door; sometimes he takes it inside to the kitchen.
“Each time you go you don’t know who’s on your list really, you know who your regulars are but then again you can’t guarantee because your regular might be in hospital or might be away on holiday.”
Before Roy became a volunteer deliverer, he and Shirley were caretakers for Cobham Intermediate School in Burnside for 10 years. Before that, they owned two dairies in Marshland for six years.
Roy does three separate rounds of deliveries, mostly in the eastern suburbs, and said he’ll definitely miss going around the town.
“I’m delivering meals to places that I normally don’t go as part of my other life,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s become a sort of pattern of my life if you know what I mean.”
Roy still hasn’t decided what he’ll do in place of his delivery rounds, but said he’s looking forward to some rest and relaxation – and will even order the meals for himself during the winter.
