The annual Kallista-The Patch CFA Santa run will make a return this Christmas after Covid-19 cancelled the event last year.
Santa Clause will be visiting Sherbrooke on Monday 20 November, Kallista on Tuesday 21 November, and The Patch on Wednesday 22 November to hand out lollies from the back of the CFA tanker.
Kallista-The Patch CFA Captain Martin Noonan said the event will begin at 6pm and go for an hour each day.
“We’ve got Santa already booked and he’s all ready to go,” he said.
“We’ve decorated tanker one -which is the smaller tanker- and we’ll be driving it around.”
Mr Noonan said the CFA is excited to bring the event back after it was unable to run last year because of Covid restrictions.
“Last year was the first year any of our veterans can remember that we haven’t done it,” he said.
“There were a lot of grown-up kids in 2019 that have been seeing the Kallista-the Patch tanker since they were very small and now they’re in their early 20s or teens and hanging out in front of their house waiting for a bag of lollies.”
The Kallista-The Patch Fire Brigade CFA is a fully volunteer fire fighting brigade.
While Santa won’t be able to exit the vehicle because of the restrictions, Mr Noonan said people will know when he’s coming through their area.
“They know that the tanker is coming because we’ve got an advanced vehicle with the siren going haphazardly and with the lights on, which is probably around half an hour in front of the tanker,” he said.
“Last time that I was driving the tanker you could see a couple of kids standing in the middle of the dirt road, they were taken with so much excitement that they were just jumping up and down as we’re approaching which was a really fun thing to see.”
More information can be found on the Kallista-The Patch CFA Facebook page.
