This year’s Australia Day Awards recognised the hardworking selflessness and dedication to community of Ballarat’s citizens.
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Peter Caligari OAM received the major Citizen of the Year Award for his work as the director of the 3BA Christmas Appeal.
It was a day of celebration for Caligari with his wife Ola’s birthday taking place yesterday, and he said it was great honour and privilege to receive the acknowledge from the community.
“When I introduced the appeal back in 1980, never did I believe it would reach the standard and level which it has reached now,” he said.
“The fact that the appeal is now supporting around 4,500 families every Christmas is very gratifying.
“Without the appeal, many of these families would have nothing to look forward to or enjoy at Christmas.
“The role Ola plays is very much behind the scenes, but very valuable, and she’s absolutely brilliant at counting coin collection tins.”
Lou Ridsdale, Maureen Hatcher and Dawn Fischer were also nominated.
The Buninyong Festival was the recipient of Community Event of the Year 2018, with Food is Free Inc and the Brown Hill Progress Association Community Festival nominees for the award.
Buninyong Festival president Lisa Cressey, a small business owner and event manager in the town, accepted the award on behalf of the biennial festival.
She said the seven person-strong festival committee made a “mammoth effort” in 2017.
“We rebranded last year to basically tie in all the previous Buninyong festivals together,” she said.
“We tried to go back to the values of the Gold King Festival,” she said. “It was a bit of an anomaly last year, we’d never experienced that level of community engagement before.”
The festival, held in October 2017, saw more than 1009 stall holders and 17 food vendors gather for a day of music, art and community engagement at De Soza Park.
Giarn Carroll was named the Young Citizen of the Year for her involvement with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Rotary and charitable health organisations.
Having just moved to study Marine and Antarctic Science at the University of Tasmania, Giarn’s award was accepted by her father Simon. He said that his daughter “really feels like if she belongs to a community, she should make a positive contribution to it”.
The esteemed group of young nominees for the award included Jake Sbardella, Joel Hughes, Karissa Cribbes, Lucy Stoel, Mitchell Burgess, Olivia Clarke, Riley Caldow, Tayla Moody, Vanessa Amendegnato and Georgia Sparkes.
Twenty people received their Australian citizenship at the ceremony.
