Kay Phillips nominated for Pride of Australia medal for environmental work on NSW’s south coast

IF you’ve been lucky enough to see the sun rise over the south coast’s Sanctuary Point, chances are you‘ve also seen Kay Phillips picking up rubbish tourists have left behind.

IF you’ve been lucky enough to see the sun rise at 5am over the south coast town of Sanctuary Point, chances are you’d have also seen Kay Phillips picking up rubbish tourists have left behind.

If you ventured to the local library on a Friday you’d have seen her taking the local kids for story time, and then up to the bakery for a special treat.

And if you’d gone to see a play at the primary school, chances are she’d have sewn most of the costumes.

Kay Phillips with Stephanie, Taiha, Bailey, Saskia and Alba. Picture: Toby Zerna

At this school all the children call her Nanny Kay, and love her like she was their own.

“The school fence is my fence and I have a gate that goes through to the school, so when we walk through all the kids say ‘Hello Nanny Kay’, which is so nice,” she said.

In her 66 years she has managed to squeeze in 46 years of marriage to best friend Gordon, three children, seven grandchildren and 10 foster children.

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“When our kids started leaving home we thought we had done a pretty good job in raising them so we started fostering children, mostly teenagers, which was quite difficult at times,” she said.

“We had 10 and some of them turned out very well, and they tell us it was because of us — so it’s nice to know we changed a few lives.”

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Nanny Kay has also run a family day care for the past 15 years, looking after four children every day as well as before and after-school care.

“I love doing things for people and I love helping the young new mums in the area,” says Nanny Kay, who was nominated for The Daily Telegraph’s Pride of Australia Community Spirit Medal by friend Josie Gallant.

“I have known her for over 20 years; she was one of the first people I met when we first moved to the south coast and it soon became ­obvious to us Kay was special,” the mother-of-two said.

“When I went into labour with our son Marcus, it was Nanny Kay who my husband Todd called at 1am to drop off our daughter.

“Nothing is ever a problem for her, and she is loved by so many.”