On Australia Day, our club joins in the citizenship ceremony and presents an award to a local community member that deserves recognition. Today, that was Eileen Davis.
Eileen has lived in the Shire for nearly 30 years and has been a community minded person since arriving.
Over the last 25 years our awardee has:
- Started her volunteering journey at the Marri Grove SchooI canteen.
- As a committee member at the Byford Learning Centre at the Briggs Park Pavilion, the team organised a variety of events and activities to encourage people to have fun and learn something new and more importantly be inclusive and make new friends.
- These activities included: papermaking, a book club, children’s activities, bushwalking, yoga, weightwatchers, ballroom, Scottish and even belly dancing.
- The choir started in 1998, celebrating their 25 year anniversary last year and there are still have some original members in our choir. They are called ‘The Heritage Country Choir’ because we live in part of heritage country so it made sense. Starting the choir is one of her proudest achievements, to sing is to be really happy and to sing with others is even better. It is great for your health and general well-being and to have the added pleasure of making new friends, giving back to our local community, as we sing at all of the major events for the shire and many more events across heritage country including the Armadale hospital every year at Christmas.
- She also joined the Byford volunteer bushfire brigade for a spell on the 2way radios.
- An active participant and volunteer with Landare SJ including promotions at the Perth Garden Festivals and the SJ Food & Farm Fest.
- A long involvement in tree planting in reserves and rubbish picking up on a volunteer basis, leading to her other proud achievement along with her partner Karl, is to be the custodians for the Brickwood Reserve for the past 9 years. The group is called ‘Friends of Brickwood Reserve’ and we look after it on a regular basis, weeding and picking up rubbish around the reserve. As the reserve has rare and endangered plant communities, along with having one of the largest stand of Marri and kingias in one place in WA, is why we fiercely protect it to keep it as it is, we are the reserves voice.
- They also conduct well attended the Brickwood Reserve wildflower walks. They call it Byford’s equivalent to Kings Park.
And much more. We celebrate the efforts of all our volunteers, especially all of this year’s Shire nominees and in 2024, Rotary recognises its “Service Above Self” awardee, Eileen Davis.
