Donations to Lifeline Canberra have now exceeded $700,000 after support began pouring in on Friday in the wake of the decision to cancel the annual book fair fundraiser on the weekend.
The chief executive officer of Lifeline ACT, Carrie-Ann Leeson, said she was overwhelmed by the public response, which began spontaneously after the fundraiser had to be cancelled due to the possibility of potentially unsafe conditions for volunteers and visitors.
Late last week the books, CDs and other goods had been trucked into two pavilions in readiness for the fair . But as the number of anti-vax and "freedom" protesters inside Exhibition Park grew into the thousands and protective fences meant to separate the campers from the bookfair patrons were torn down, a decision was made to call a halt.
On the weekend, all the bookfair materials were put back in boxes, placed on pallets and trucked out again, then re-distributed around the Lifeline distribution locations, including Book Lovers Lane at the Fyshwick markets.
Ms Leeson described the cash donations as "an incredible outpouring of community support".
"The books are safe and in their various locations today [Monday] and the volunteers are not on site because that's when Exhibition Park is being emptied in readiness for the [Royal Canberra] Show," she said.
"We're going to pay it [the community support] forward and we are now going to send them [the donated books] out to other charities and organisations.
"For instance, we have just organised with Rotary to get a whole pallet of picture books across to school children in Papua New Guinea.
"As we hear from other charities, communities and schools that missed out on books because the bookfair was closed but need them [the books] for educational purposes, we are arranging to get books out to them, too."
She said that it was not Lifeline's intention to raise this much money through an online appeal "but the community had different plans for us".
"We were devastated but now we're just so grateful," she said.
"We are now so close to exceeding what we might have otherwise have raised [from the bookfair]."
She said that the financial support started "out of the blue" on Friday as people were unable to access the fair but called Lifeline and gave a donation instead.
"By late Friday we had 500 or 600 donations just from people who had tried to get in and were turned around and from there it just snowballed," she said.
She said that the public generosity shown over the weekend said a great deal about the "big heart" of the Canberra community.
"The heart and the community which exists here is amazing. We've always been a big part of the Canberra community and we are 50 years old this year," she said.
"This is the first time we've seen the community take it upon themselves to say 'Lifeline Canberra we want you here, we can't imagine a world without you, and we're going to support you no matter what'."
While the crush of the protester numbers ultimately forced the bookfair to be called off, she said the majority of the people at Exhibition Park volunteers had engaged with "were very supportive of Lifeline's services and some had used them".
"It's just that there were tens of thousands potentially coming for the bookfair, tens of thousands already there in the campground and a little element of nasty behaviour so we decided that it was safer to just call it off."
