For our 15th Pride of Australia we chat to past award winners about what they’ve been up to in recent years
Calling all heroes great and small: The 15th annual Pride of Australia awards are open for nominations. Who do you know who deserves to be in the company of these past winners?
Pride of Australia
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To honour fifteen years of celebrating local heroes, The Sunday Mail takes a walk down memory lane to see what past Prides of Australia have been up to.
Thirteen years seems like a lifetime ago for Mary Morgan, a Scotch College girl, who was part of the Smith Family’s Student2Student program, helping disadvantaged children learn to read via telephone.
She found the program rewarding at age 14 and still remembers the receiving her Pride of Australia award all those years ago.
And the Kent Town woman hasn’t stopped giving back to the community over the years, volunteering every year for the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal and choosing to study nursing so she could use her caring nature day-to-day.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have a good upbringing and hopefully I can share that with others,” she said.
A caring and courageous nature is something 43-year-old Nigel Hardy and Ms Morgan share. Last year the Warradale man saved his best friend from almost certain death in a remote area on the Birdsville Track north of Marree.
Geoff Pinch fell into a hot springs and with strength he never knew he had, Mr Hardy from Warradale dragged him out of the water and cooled his body with ice.
He then drove an hour to the nearest homestead where Mr Pinch, who survived burns to 85 per cent of his body, was attended by a Royal Flying Doctors crew.
Mr Pinch is set to travel around Australia with his wife, and Mr Hardy said he will make every effort to meet them along their way somewhere along the way.
He said awards like the Pride of Australia gave the community recognition for their leaps of faith.
“Awards like this are important as it gives the public the chance to realise the humanity we all have,” Mr Hardy told The Sunday Mail.
And Lachlan Gray knows only too well about leaps of faith.
He was hailed a hero at age four when he saved his baby brother from drowning at their Belair family home.
Mitchell Gray, then just 20 months old, overbalanced and fell head first into a garden pond in the backyard.
Lachlan quickly leapt into gear and pulled his brother’s head out of the pond while simultaneously yelling for his mother Catherine.
Lachlan, now 9, was nominated by his grandmother for a 2014 Child of Courage award.
Ms Gray said Lachlan and Mitchell, now 6, are very good friends, and she thinks people should nominate others in the community to pay them the recognition they deserve.
“It’s important to recognise people who do the right thing, especially people who step out of their comfort zone to save someone else,” she said.
For the second year News Corp Australia has partnered with Australia Post and 7 NEWS to launch the 15th annual Pride of Australia awards.
Since 2005 around 700 Australians were honoured for unassuming men, women and children thrown into life or death situations, volunteers raising for charity, or displaying bravery beyond their years.
To nominate someone in your community for a Pride of Australia award visit prideofaustralia.com.au