Newspaper article

HOw's this Al
Brian Wood
SNAPPER: Local mum Alice Smith has hit on a novel idea of selling pictures of her uncle's farm on Ebay to help support his fight against the lingering drought.0131palice
DON'T sell the farm. Don't sell the sheep and cattle. Sell photos of them.A Bathurst mum has come up with an ingenious way of helping her drought-stricken family survive the worst drought in living memory.Alice Winwood-Smith's uncle Bill Bell runs the "Rangers" property near Oberon, the 810 hectare (2000 acres) farm having been in the family for five generations.However, the big dry has had a crippling effect on the enterprise and with hand-feeding a daily routine, acre the feed bills soon start to mount.Wanting to help out, Mrs Winwood-Smith launched a campaign to raise drought funds to pay for the oats and hay.Over the past week she started selling photographs she took at the farm on Ebay with bids started at $30 each.Mrs Winwood-Smith, who describes herself as "just a housewife", came up with her idea while lying in bed one night the her kids asleep and husband Mick out on the farm helping Bill."We were there over Christmas and it was so depressing," she said. "I was thinking of all sorts of things, like fashion parades and other events."Then I thought 'how could we get people to come out and have a look?' (at the farm). Suddenly the idea of taking photos popped up."Mrs Winwood-Smith said her idea has been an instant success."The bids for one picture are up to $88 at the moment," she said. "Now people are asking how much things are they have noticed in the photos. They want to buy them too."In fact, people from all over Australia have been contacting me congratulating me for my efforts. I'm getting new emails every day."Now my aim is to sell 500 pictures at $30 each. That should raise enough money to keep Uncle Bill going for a while."Hopefully until this drought ends, but you can never rely on Mother Nature."