The weekend’s Easter book fair raised $9500 for south-west crisis support and suicide prevention services. That means a further 250 calls to the crisis line can be answered this year. 

It also means the organisation can look at employing a paid telephone counsellor and possibly implementing a call-back service. 

Lifeline South West’s Chloe Brian said it was a fantastic result, with more than 1000 people browsing through the fair over three days.

She said a popular feature of the weekend was the $40 box of books. 

“We estimate that it costs $40 to answer one phone call, so each box we sold was equal to one extra phone call,” Ms Brian said. 

“We had seven truckloads of books, including three pallets from Lifeline in Canberra, which were kindly picked up for us by Future Freight in Camperdown.

“There is about a third of the books left over. They will be sold through our stores or kept for a future book fair.” 

Ms Brian said being able to take an extra 250 calls a week will help save lives. 

“It means calls to the crisis line aren’t going unanswered. We hope we can get a call-back service up and running to further increase and improve that service. 

“Everything left over will go to suicide prevention programs.” 

Ms Brian said the fair would now be reviewed but it was looking likely it could become an annual event. 

jwoolley@fairfaxmedia.com.au