Aaron Wright is making sure he gets his Powerball entry in every week!

 Proprietor of local coffee-shop institution, Café Latte; he reckons his luck has to change!

 Aaron and wife, Emma, have had a star-crossed 18-months involving COVID-19 lockdowns, restrictive trading during first wave of the pandemic, and then a fire on Easter Monday that literally destroyed his premises on Summer St.

 However, the kindness of the local Uniting Church community has come to his rescue.

 Relocating to the main Church Hall at 217 Anson Street; he is now battling-on under our second winter lockdown as he waits for the interminable wheels of insurance assessors to slowly turn… a solid wood coffee-table one of the few items that he managed to rescue from the fire.

 “Believe it or not, we got it out the day of the fire just before we were shot down,” he said. His insurance company, though, has not been able to act with such expeditious efficiency over the past three months.

 “Hopefully, in two weeks’ time it may start. “We’re waiting for a ‘make safe’ order so that our insurance assessor can get in and do an assessment of the building,” Aaron explained.

 “Because the fire was upstairs (in a small, occupied flat), my insurance company won’t go in until the landlord’s insurance company clears and makes the site safe,” he added.

 Notified almost immediately the fire started, he was hopeful that he could keep operating almost as business-as-usual.

 “We got the call at 11.30 in the morning and, when I came down, it didn’t look too bad, it was still just burning in the flat. I thought ‘a fire upstairs, we’ll be able to keep trading’.” 

 The fire in the at-time unoccupied bed-sit eventually, however, collapsed the floor above into his shop (bringing down an uninjured firefighter at the same time!) making the whole site unsafe.

 “It could have been anything that caused it; because we don’t own the building, probably we’ll never know. The next day I came down, I thought, ‘that’s us gone!’.” he said ruefully.

 Regular customers at the coffee shop — members of the local church around the corner — though stepped-in, heeding the example of the Good Samaritan.

 “The Uniting Church approached us and offered us a place in the Uniting Church parish centre. They said, ‘come over and have a look,’ and the rest is history,” he said.

 Taking-up a corner of the centre with tables, chairs, and signage, he has replicated in miniature the homely ambience of one of Orange’s longest-established traditional coffee shops.

 “We’ve got cakes, coffee, and we’re now doing meals again, so our message is, ‘come back and support us,” he said.

 Making the best of life’s vicissitudes, he is now also battling the most-recent pandemic lockdown restrictions that have seen custom of about 30 per cent of his usual trade. “On Monday, I lost $12,000 in catering because of COVID.”

 Aaron though, likes to keep busy; he would still rather be operating than sitting at home watching streaming services.

 “It just gives you something, an out to keep business going; it’s good for the kids, it keeps structure and meaning in their lives,” he said about his three children.

 At the moment, he’s hoping that it’s going to be a happy new year for his business, customers, and staff. “We’ve been operating 12 years, so it’s our life in many ways.”

 His father Lindsay, dropping in for a chat, said that Aaron and Emma have been able to keep going with the benefit of a little help from their friends.

 “The main thing is, that his loyal customers at his other shop, are supporting him here.”

 Aaron even now is looking to the future for his eventual re-opening. “I was hoping for Christmas, it should take about three weeks to complete the safe-work and we then go from there,” he said.

 “I’ve been playing Powerball as a stress-release, when we win the $6 million, we won’t have any worries then. I mean, our luck has got to change sometime, right?”