30/11/2025
Today I decided to try to do a post once a month about those who help us keep going.
From our volunteers, to donors & adopters.✨
This is the first post, so keep watching to get to know how is behind the scenes keeping us afloat more ways than one.
📰 https://blueyalicebunnyrefuge.org.au/donor-spotlight-november-2025/
There are so many small, privately run animal shelters Victoria wide, let alone Australia, who don’t get annual government funding or million $$$ donations from wealthy estates. This is particularly noticeable in rabbit specific rescues. The volunteers & operators are not paid. Operators work to pay mortgages, rent etc, as well as run their shelter, often facing exhaustion & depression. The volunteers are not much different, generously giving of themselves to help keep set ups clean, animals, cuddled, groomed & fed. It hurts them too when we are struggling. Occasionally the volunteers might get some fuel money to help them get here but sadly, that’s about it.
A Story of Generosity by one generous donor who helped to unwittingly "Save the Refuge”.
But first, bit of a back story…
Long before she became the quiet force behind the Bluey & Alice Bunny Refuge, this lady had already lived a life shaped by courage! After her marriage ended, she left her 7,000-acre Queensland property behind and returned to Melbourne with her youngest daughter. She rebuilt her life from the ground up, eventually bringing her other two children back under her roof in Camberwell. She raised all three girls on her own, not just out of choice, but out of sheer determination, and love for her children.
Life never really slowed down for her. Even now, living in country Victoria on a farm run by two of her daughters and a son-in-law, retirement remains something she jokes about more than she lives. There is always something to do, someone who needs help, or an animal needing care. And perhaps that is why, when she first sought a place where her children could be happy, she found more than a property. She found a purpose.
Where we came in…
Her love for animals was lifelong & instinctive. She felt their hurts as if they were her own, and she could not bear to see any creature suffer. So, when she came across the Bluey & Alice Bunny Refuge and saw the hearts and hands behind it, she didn’t question it. She simply acted, with the quiet, generous certainty that defined her.
Her generosity arrived powerfully, the kind of support that changes outcomes. She stepped in, unwittingly, at a moment when the refuge was holding on by a thread, and she became the reason it continued to exist. Because of her, because of her instinct to help animals, the refuge found stability, growth, then a future. She had already saved her girls by raising them with love and grit, now she had saved an animal shelter from closure. Her large contributions have kept the doors open, fed the rabbits, paid vets & kept hope alive rather than the unknown future that faced us.
Without her & the many others who continue to help us, the refuge would, without a doubt, close its doors.
Her story is not just one of generosity, but of resilience. She left a life behind, rebuilt another, worked tirelessly, and still found the heart-space to ensure that a refuge full of forgotten rabbits, would not be forgotten after all.
And today, every rabbit who benefits from an air-conditioned room to keep them comfortable, has the medical attention they need, munches on hay & fresh greens in safety at Bluey & Alice. All of this is her legacy along with legacy of many others. Legacies born from strength, compassion, and a lifetime of choosing kindness when it mattered most.
Thank you, Judy from the bottom of our beating bunny hearts!
