By Callum Ludwig
President of the Warburton Advancement League Jeff Gill has been honoured at Yarra Ranges Council’s annual Australia Day Awards.
Mr Gill received the Mayor’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to the Advancement League and tireless efforts to improve the Warburton township.
Mr Gill said he was very humbled, but wanted to stress he sees it as receiving it on behalf of the Warburton Advancement League.
“I might have been President for the last 20 years, but we are a really good team and we punch above our weight in some of our projects. Apart from that, I was pretty gobsmacked to have received the award,” he said.
“It was humbling to receive it from Jim Child because I’ve known him for a long time and he was quite sincere when mentioning the work we do. I’ll be honest, I get a buzz out of doing it anyway.”
Mr Gill was a part of the working group for the construction of the well-received Warburton Water World which reinvigorated what was the former Warburton pool into a space enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.
Mr Gill said he thinks it’s fair to say that in the 70 years, the Warburton Advancement League has been in town, there hasn’t been an event or a project they haven’t been involved in.
“Everything that has happened in Warburton, we’ve had a small or big hand in, and now it’s great to see the town is humming, that’s the only word for it and I certainly don’t have a problem with it,” he said.
“I think we have come to grips with Warburton being a tourist town now and if it is the way forward so be it. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve seen everything close, but we’ve got to have young families in the town and to do that you’ve got to have some form of employment. Now everything is booming again, we’ve all got staff on and it’s all due to one thing.”
In the near future, Mr Gill and the Warburton Advancement League will be continuing to work on the Cerini Centre Social and Affordable Housing Project, which is almost at the pre-planning stage, participating in the process of the delivery of the approved Warburton Mountain Bike Destination (of which the discussions for Mr Gill was involved in more than 13 years ago) and continuing to make the former Sanitarium Factory safe and reactivate the site.
At the awards ceremony, childhood Seville resident Erchana Murray-Bartlett also received a Certificate of Recognition for her record-breaking 150 consecutive marathon effort ‘Tip to Toe’.
