Sydney  - Australian garden ornament enthusiasts dashed 800 kilometres to save 1,500 gnomes from the scrapheap after they were orphaned by the death of an elderly woman.

The new owners of the property in Cootamundra, a town in New South Wales, were all for turning them into rubble but organizers of the annual Australian Gnome Convention arranged a convoy to have them moved to safety.

"We didn't want to see them put in a skip and taken to the tip and all smashed up," chief organizer David Cook said Tuesday.

The gnomes will go to foster homes in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney awaiting full adoption at the sixth annual convention in January.(dpa)