Big contribution: Rochester resident Leigh Wilson has been nominated for an Australian Day award for 2024.
Photo by
supplied
A number of exceptional residents and an organisation, who have tirelessly served their community, have been selected to represent Rochester as part of Australia Day celebrations.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
The selfless members are Leigh Wilson, Rochester’s Citizen of the Year, Denvah Matthews, as Young Citizen of the year and Rochester Community House who will be up for the group award.
As a part of being chosen for the award locally, they are now in the running for the position for the whole of Campaspe.
After Mr Wilson took on the task to aid the recovery of the town, his leadership and guidance propelled him to be nominated for Citizen of the Year.
“Leigh has made an incredible contribution to the Rochester community in the past 12 months, largely at his expense,” Mrs Gledhill said.
“Within two weeks of the October 2022 flood event, Leigh set up a Community Recovery Committee.
“Even though the 2022 flood impacted Leigh, he took the time to gather appropriate stakeholders covering education, emergency services, health, industry, business, government and community to address issues as they emerged, including ensuring that major infrastructure damage in the community was highlighted and addressed.”
The second person to be nominated was Denvah Matthews by Heather Darbyshire who felt compelled after a tumultuous two years and seeing what the young lady had achieved.
Young Citizen of the Year: Georgia Matthews (right) and younger sister Denvah after Denvah was named Rochester's Young Citizen of the Year.
“In 2023, she was school captain and school house spirit captain. In these roles, she modelled positive ways forward after the challenges of the October floods,” Mrs Darbyshire said.
“She has been the “go-to” media person for the school with many radio and television interviews, sharing insights into the challenges our young people are experiencing and sharing their resilience with a broad audience.
The final nomination is Rochester Community House. RCH chair of the committee of management, Jane Reid, nominated the organisation for the Australia Day honours, and she explained the reasons why the organisation was nominated.
Helping out: Rochester Community House manager Amanda Logie and her organisation has been nominated for the Community Group of the Year.
Photo by
steve Huntley
“For the past few years, they have been running a weekly FoodShare program which ensures that the vulnerable members of our community have some food security,” Mrs Reid said.
“They also manage the men’s shed and partner with Rotary to work the Community Garden.”
RCH also helped to manage the market for the previous eight years.
The full awards will be presented at the Rochester breakfast on January 26. This event will be at the Rochester Lions Park from 7am to 8.30am.
It will include a barbecue breakfast, flag-raising ceremony, guest speaker and the presentation of the awards.
Other local events on the day will include Lockington’s breakfast at Lions Park from 8am to 10.30am and kids’ fishing competition at the Lockington Channel.
The competition will start after the breakfast at 10.30am and conclude at 12.30pm.
For people in Elmore there will be a later breakfast at 10am with their official ceremony taking place at 10.30am. This is taking place at the Elmore Community Hub, 3 Clarke St.
7°C