Local super seniors celebrated

THE City’s star older residents were revealed earlier this week with the winners of the Ballarat Seniors Awards announced on Tuesday morning.

The recipients were celebrated with a presentation at Town Hall, which saw each of the five category’s winners, and four nominees acknowledged.

Mayor Cr Des Hudson said the awards are all about recognising the city’s older residents aged 55 and older.

“We just got a small snapshot of the thousands of people in our community that volunteer their time, give of themselves… across Ballarat, year in, year out,” he said.

“Seniors can feel invisible, like they’ve lost that sense of purpose, but if you were to turn around take all that volunteerism, all that knowledge away, our community would stop.”

Whereas previous awards gave the Ballarat Senior of the Year award to one of the four category winners, this year marked the first where the top nod was awarded separate from the other titles.

Social justice volunteer and humanitarian Maureen Doonan was recognised for her years of service, receiving the Ballarat Senior of the Year Award.

With more than 20 years of working with groups like Ballarat Refugee Asylum Seeker Support Network and opening her home up to young refugees, she said she was taught early on to always care for others.

“I was brought up to believe we help our neighbour, whatever that might be,” she said.

“I’d often walk home from school and there were strangers in the house, they’d stay a while, so you might as well get to know them.

“That was my mother’s attitude. You look at people and think if I were in that situation, what would I need, or like someone to do? And you do it.”

The Ageing Well Award went to Mary Douglas, who’s supported palliative care patients at Ballarat Hospice for more than a decade, and currently helps provide meals at the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre.

Sebastopol Fire Brigade boss Captain Steve Burgess, whose been with the CFA for more than 20 years, received the Volunteer Award.

Cheryl Szollosi was acknowledged for her coordinating of inclusive LGBTQIA+ groups Rainbow Coffee Ballarat, and Uncoordinated Queers, the latter of which she co-founded, with the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award.

The Healthy and Active Living Award went to Stuart Bell, who’s been a volunteer with Lifeline for more than a decade and a volunteer driver for the Ballarat Foundation’s L2P program.

He said the awards recipients shared a common sense of selflessness.

“We’ve all got a commitment to helping people,” he said. “As a volunteer, what appeals to me the most is the acknowledgment you get from the people you support.

“You may only do what seems a small thing, that actually means a lot to their day-to-day life. There’s also a privileged part of meeting people that you’d never, ever meet through the normal course of life.”

The ceremony was the final activity as part of the municipality’s Seniors Festival held during October.