Robert (“never Robert – always Bob or Bobby”) Gordon Bath has been awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to the Ballarat community.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It would be difficult in the extreme to argue there was a person less deserving of the award, although Bob will happily do that. He joins his late brother Allan in winning an OAM, and says his family’s commitment to community and volunteering springs from two sources.
The first was the example set by his parents in Buninyong when he was young.
“My mother and father set a high standard for community work, and all my family have been involved,” says Bath.
“It’s not unusual in country areas – if it’s not the fire brigade, it’s the cricket club and so on.”
The second source is his gratitude to his family and the people of Ballarat for their emotional and financial support in getting him to the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.
A gifted boxer since his youth training in Buninyong under the tutelage of the Victorian Police Force light-heavyweight champion Len McCole, Bob Bath had 50 amateur bouts for just two defeats.
He fought for Australia as a bantamweight, winning his first fight but going down in the second to South Korea’s Song Sun-Cheon.
Not long after, in 1958, Bob Bath began his almost 40-year career as sportsmaster at Ballarat Grammar. He says at the outset of his time, there were just four choices for the students: cricket and rowing in summer; football and cross-country in winter.
He’s proud of having introduced new sports to the school such as basketball, table tennis and soccer, and of having the school’s swimming pool named in his honour.
Bath was president of the Art Gallery of Ballarat Association Council, and says he was thrilled to be among those that appointed current director Gordon Morrison in 2004. He says the gallery has thrived under his directorship.
Among his other roles Bob Bath has been president of both the Ballarat Riding for the Disabled and the Ballarat Reform League, and for over 20 years was secretary of the Ballarat Public Schools‘ Association.
“A lot of organisations here are asking for volunteers. They need people. ‘Community’ is just a word. It has to have involvement.”
