Australia Day ambassador Bronte Hendricks on Thursday at the Cobar Memorial Swimming Pool.
Australia Day ambassador Bronte Hendricks on Thursday at the Cobar Memorial Swimming Pool.
From a list of eight worthy nominees, Nymagee resident, Matthew Nicholson, was named as the Citizen of the Year at the Australia Day awards last Thursday.
In accepting the award, Matt said he was “embarrassed as there are so many people more worthy than me”.
His three nominations for the award however attest that Matt was indeed a deserving recipient.
He was described as the backbone and driving force of the Nymagee community as Matt is always willing to volunteer his time, donate equipment or just lend a hand when it’s needed.
Matt keeps the village tidy and maintained – he mows the grounds at the old school, the park, the hall and entrance to the village; he serves on a number of sporting and community committees including the Nymagee Progress Association, Landcare group, senior cricket and soccer; and helps to run community functions that over the past year have included the Anzac Day service and Nymagee Gymkhana, of which he was the driving force.
Sophie Clark earned the Young Citizen of the Year title.
Over the past year Sophie has proven to be an outstanding young role model for our community.
She’s a school leader that displays a positive attitude and encourages others.
Sophie has not only has excelled academically over the past 12 months, she has also a number of sporting achievements through netball and football.
Sophie has also been a voice for her peers as a participant in the Rural Youth Ambassador program.
Michael Bannister collected the Bossie Mitchell Service to the Community Award.
As per his nomination, Mick is well known for always being the first to step forward when someone is in trouble.
In winter he helped out a number of pensioners by cutting wood and delivering it – without payment.
Last year it’s estimated he would have delivered more than 30 trailer loads of wood for Cobar pensioners. (When collecting his award on Thursday, Mick said some of the credit should also go to Terry Dunne, who lets him cut the wood on his property.)
Mick’s also helped out a number of pensioners with other problems.
On one occasion he helped one who couldn’t get a plumber and spent all day fixing the problem, including replacing fittings at his own cost.
Mick voluntarily drives the bus for school sporting trips, and this past year he also helped out cleaning up the Catholic Church yard.
Cobar’s Running on Empty Festival was named the Community Event of the Year.
Last year the ROEF2022 celebrated the 40th anniversary of the film and drew a big crowd of visitors to Cobar to help locals celebrate all things cars!
It provided an opportunity to showcase all Cobar has to offer and was a fundraiser for a new war memorial.
The big festival program provided something for everyone with lots of entertainment, markets, movie nights, cruise days and more.
The streets of Cobar were buzzing.
Environmental projects run by Cobar High School earned the school the Environmental Sustainability Award.
Over the past year, the school has been taking part in the Royal Flying Doctor Service funded project, Guiding Rural Outback Wellbeing, which encourages young people to live healthy.
The school developed a fish farm, bee hive, incubated chickens and planted a large garden of sunflowers – which have provided numerous benefits to the environment by attracting many species of bees, it also acts as a food source and helps detox contaminated soil.
The school is working towards having a farmers market in the future.
