Alan Campbell speaks out after Orange Men's Shed broken in to

For nearly 15 months, the group have been using one of the Riverside buildings on the Bloomfield campus for their workshop after a 2019 fire caused "major damage" to their traditional Lucknow set-up.

They have been in the process of moving things back to the building along the highway, but were left frustrated by a break-in at the Riverside building on Wednesday this week.

"All of the battery powered equipment as well as the TV, defibrillator, laser unit and a members treasure chest were stolen," Mr Campbell said.

"They kicked one of the back doors in and really smashed it up."

He estimated the cost of replacing everything at around $5000, half of which was needed for the defibrillator alone.

"It's not the most pleasant of feelings and there's a lot of people to be aware of these days," he said.

"There's a lot of break-ins and car thefts, but it's still not a pleasant feeling."

Mr Campbell was alerted to the break-in on the Thursday morning.

"The maintenance man at Riverside found it and he rang us," he said.

"I went out there about 10am so we were fortunate that he did find it because we wouldn't have been going back until Monday otherwise.

"It's just annoying. The trouble is, it's happened to so many people that it puts us back a bit."

The men's shed members have been operating from the Riverside building, while gradually re-installing wood-working and metal-working equipment in the Lucknow building.

Mr Campbell said they would "fight on."

"We fought on from losing the shed at Lucknow for a while and we're in the hiatus of going back to Lucknow, we just have a few things we need to do to get back out there," he said.

"We'll rise again from the ashes."

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