16101/01VOLUNTEERS who have sent hundreds of tonnes of aid to the areas affected by the Boxing Day tsunami breathed a huge sigh of relief as the last of the goods left the hangar at Wroughton Science Museum on Monday.

Thanks to an 11th hour intervention by the charity Islamic Relief, the aid was loaded onto two containers and sent off to a Kent port where it will be loaded onto a ship bound for Sri Lanka, which suffered particularly badly in the disaster.

Wiltshire Mercy Appeal's chairman, Alex Duffey, from Devizes, received a cheque for £1,300 from Adil Husseini of Birmingham-based Islamic Relief, enough to pay to transport the last 120 pallets of aid to where they are needed.

The goods include blankets, clothing, tents and some non-perishable food. It is the last of an estimated 3,500 tonnes of aid handled by the appeal, the vast majority of it donated by members of the public.

Mr Duffey said: "We're all feeling a lot better today. We had got to the point that, if no one came up with the means of getting this stuff to Sri Lanka, we would have been faced with recycling it or dumping it.

"Now it is all safely loaded and the ship sails today. We have a contact in Sri Lanka, a lecturer at the Shrivenham military college, who has agreed to monitor where the aid is going and who is getting it.

"I had a man on the phone this morning who was concerned that we were sending food and water, which is not what they need any more. I was able to reassure him that the aid we are sending is mainly blankets and clothes, which are still badly needed."

The last dispatch of aid from the Science Museum at Wroughton is the last chapter in a remarkable story of selflessness, where six local businessmen came together and urged the local community to help people on the other side of the world who had been the victims of a natural disaster.

Swindon-based tile retailer, Manalito Chando, had the idea of appealing to the local community to send as much aid as possible but even he was overwhelmed by the response.

Very soon the hangar at the former airfield filled up and the main problem was finding a way to get the goods to where they were needed. Hundreds of volunteers made their way to the hangar to lend a hand counting, checking, sorting and packing the thousands of different items that had been donated.

Air Sri Lanka was initially eager to help fly the aid out but had to pull out due to cost, and appeals to the Government to get the RAF to fly the aid over proved unsuccessful.

Finally, Islamic Relief agreed to take the aid and most of it was ferried up to Birmingham. At last the charity ran out of room to store any more but they were willing to contribute £1,300 to the £2,000 cost of shipping out the last 120 tonnes of aid.

Surveying the now empty hangar on Monday, Mr Duffey said: "We have learned a lot from the last four to five months. We were just half a dozen blokes who had never done anything like this before in our lives.

"This was not just the biggest collection in Wiltshire, or England, but in Europe. It was a massive effort and I would personally like to thank everyone who helped us."