Dan Roberts starts GoFundMe to fix Rockhampton lady’s childhood home

What started as a Good Samaritan’s social media callout to help tidy an elderly Queensland woman’s yard has turned into a campaign to save her childhood home from “falling down around her”. VIDEO.

Dan Roberts rallied people from the community to help mow his elderly neighbours yard, now he'd started a GoFundMe to help fix her home.

When Dan Roberts was mowing his lawn at his Berserker home, he looked across the street to see a neighbouring yard overgrown.

But when he went to investigate and mow the front part of the yard, something around the back took him by surprise.

Hunched over on her hands and knees was his 70-year-old neighbour Jenny, who was cutting the grass by hand with an old machete.

Jenny had lived in the home her entire life and cared for her parents in their last days more than 11 years ago.

“I come from cattle properties so I’ve never really lived in town...I was mowing my lawn one morning and just noticed in the past few weeks and the grass was about three to four foot high, so I just went down there and started mowing, I didn’t think anyone lived there,” he said.

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“So, I just started hacking at it with the mower and did the best I could, and I went around the back to see how bad it was, and Jenny was in the backyard, she must have heard me, and it must have prompted her to get proactive.”

Dan then found out Jenny’s lawnmower had broken, and she couldn’t afford to fix it, so he put the call out on popular social media platform TikTok to rally as many people as he could to help tidy up her lawn, and his call out didn’t go unanswered.

“I’d done it before, I ran a Do It For Dolly rodeo out near Springsure a few years ago and we got a big response from social media so I thought I’d try it again and see if anyone in the area would come and give me a hand,” he said.

“We had about four people turn up (to Jenny’s) and we had one guy, he was really good, he had hedge trimmers, whipper snippers and we put a few hours in.

Dan Roberts has started a GoFundMe to try and help get his elderly neighbour's Berserker home fixed.

“She really enjoys her gardening and the feeling I get is when she lost her mum and dad she kind of lost her zest for life and I think that’s just how it got away from her.

“The second time I went she had a lot more energy and was out helping...I work week on, week off, so I went around to mow for her again and this time she had been busy, she had 37 bags lined up full of clippings and yard stuff.”

Dan Roberts put a call out on TikTok to gather a group of people to tidy his elderly neighbours yard.

While at the house Dan noticed it wasn’t just Jenny’s yard that needed some attention.

Looking up he could see parts of Jenny’s home falling apart, making a home for pigeons and possums in Jenny’s roof.

“The house is falling down around her, and she still has a lot of years left in her, and she’s never going to be able to afford to fix it,” he said.

Dan Roberts has started a GoFundMe to try and help get his elderly neighbour's Berserker home fixed.

“From what I can gather the hardwood framing is still intact, so the basic structure looks good...but the architrave stuff is all falling down, so the pigeons and possums and whatnot are living in her roof and the pigeon poo has corroded the awnings of her windows.”

Wanting to help Jenny restore the old high-set home as much as he could, Mr Roberts recently began a GoFundMe campaign to raise some funds to help fix the structure.

“I don’t know what it would even cost to fix the roof of the house,” he said.

“A lot of people have offered time, but now the garden is under control it’s more trades we need no, it’s a bit more of a specialised person.

“She doesn’t want to lose her independence...some people have said ‘why not just bulldoze it and go into a home?’ but you can’t just tell someone who has lived in that house their entire life to just doze it.”

So far, the GoFundMe has raised $400.

If you would like to help and make a donation visit the campaign page.