Nominate your hero for the Pride of Australia awards

THE Pride of Australia awards recognise the selfless efforts of ordinary people and their extraordinary achievements. The Sunday Mail shines the spotlight on three people who deserve praise.

THE Pride of Australia awards recognise the selfless efforts of ordinary people and their extraordinary achievements. The Sunday Mail shines the spotlight on three people who deserve praise.

READ BELOW: The award categories

TO NOMINATE YOUR HERO, CLICK HERE

TOM WALSH

MOST boys idolise firefighters but Tom Walsh was determined to become one.

He joined the Country Fire Service as a volunteer as soon as he could a decade ago, and then last year, at 26, became one of the state’s youngest brigade captains, at the One Tree Hill station.

In January, he faced a baptism of fire — with a blaze starting at Sampson Flat and burning out of control for a week in the Adelaide Hills.

Mr Walsh was among hundreds of CFS volunteers who fought the blaze which destroyed 26 homes, burnt out 12,500ha and claimed the lives of livestock and pets. The total cost of the losses was estimated to be more than $15 million.

Mr Walsh, an electrician, has mixed feelings looking back on the ordeal.

“There is pride about the way everyone came together and then there is the upset over those who had their lives so badly affected,” Mr Walsh said.

“I live in the community so these are my neighbours and friends and that makes it a lot more emotional.

“They say you see the best in people at the time of crisis and that’s what happened for us.”

The bushfire battle produced many inspiring stories of ordinary members of our communities doing extraordinary things.

That’s the reason News Corp’s Pride of Australia awards were devised 11 years ago to celebrate the spirit of individuals who help or save others.

Since 2004, more than 550 Australians have received a Pride of Australia medal — some for acts of extraordinary courage, others for their dedication to service or to a cause.

The Pride of Australia nominations open today. Each year, the awards attract an overwhelming number of nominations and this year those involved in the Sampson Flat bushfire dramas are sure to be prominent.

Mr Walsh said there was no adequate training to prepare for the “real deal” of a raging fire.

“Fires that size move and change at such a rapid rate that you have to cope with what you have at the time,” he said.

“No training can cover all the different events and the order in which they occur. The greatest thing for us was that we lost no lives. “I love the feeling of comradeship that comes from working in a close-knit team.

“That feeling — along with being able to give something back to the community — is why I’m a volunteer.”

– CRAIG COOK

KRISTY BARNES

FOR someone who once hated gardening, Kristy Barnes has found her calling in helping rebuild the gardens wiped out by the Sampson Flat fire.

“Two-and-a-half years ago I’d never gardened, never pulled out a weed but now I’ve really found therapy in it,” the 41-year-old said.

“It was a massive negative having a fire of that size come through I thought to myself ‘‘What can I do.”

She trawled through social media and saw there were plenty of people helping out with food, water and relief for animals, so she offered to load some plants in her car to take to residents whose home gardens had been destroyed.

The response was overwhelming and led to the Hallett Cove mother-of-two setting up the Sampson Flat Garden Revival group on Facebook. She now makes regular 120km return trips from her southern suburbs home to the fireground to replace fruit trees, native flora and to add colour to the landscape.

Working with a colleague at an Aldgate nursery, cuttings are propagated and bushfire victims can sift through donated plants.

“The residents have still got an incredible way to go,” Ms Barnes said. “You see the regrowth, everything looks green but it’s really just weeds holding the soil together.”

- RENATO CASTELLO

RACHEL WESTCOTT

Dr Westcott and her team of animal experts from the South Australian Veterinary Emergency Management were among the first responders to the bushfire crisis.

They helped save — and, sadly, euthanase — hundreds of suffering and burnt animals, including western grey kangaroos, koalas, possums, livestock and domestic pets.

“We all wish we could unsee some of the things we saw,” Dr Westcott said.

“Some we could save but kangaroos literally had their feet burnt off so there was nothing we could do but euthanase them.”

Dr Westcott was spurred to start the non-for-profit organisation, which saves animals during and after natural disasters, following Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfire in 2009.

While the fire was still burning and for many weeks after, her team continued their lifesaving work, opening a makeshift hospital at the Kersbrook Football Club as a place to tend to the injured.

The job is rewarding but Dr Westcott said the experience was bittersweet.

“We would go home every night but the community out there just looked at that black everyday,” she said.

“The hardest thing was knowing, at the end of the each day, that there were dozens more out there that had to wait for the next day.”

- KATRINA STOKES

PRIDE OF AUSTRALIA — AWARD CATEGORIES

The 10 categories and criteria that the Pride of Australia Medal honours are:

■Outstanding Bravery Medal: For helping to save, or attempting to save, a life.

■Courage Medal: For overcoming personal adversity through determination and strength of character.

■Heroism Medal: For protecting the community through their work with the emergency services or the defence force.

■Community Spirit Medal: For those whose selfless and largely unacknowledged actions have enriched the lives of those in their community.

■Child of Courage Medal: For those aged 16 years or under who have overcome adversity through strength of character or helped save, or attempted to save, a life.

■Young Leader Medal:

For those aged 25 years or under who have advanced a community through academic or personal endeavour.

■Care and Compassion Medal: For volunteers, carers or medical professionals who have made a significant improvement to the lives of those around them.

■Inspiration Medal: For teachers and role models whose compassion and wisdom while teaching, coaching or mentoring our youth has been truly inspiring.

■Environment Medal: For those whose actions prove that making a difference to
the environment can make
a difference to the broader community.

■Fair Go Medal: For Australian citizens who were born overseas and have enriched Australia through their community involvement.

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