David Ridgewell
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Manilla
Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the community of Manilla
WHEN The Leader spoke to Manilla resident David Ridgewell last week about his Australia Day award, he was still coming to terms with the news.
“I still haven’t got my head around it – I don’t have enough words to say how I feel; it’s a real honour,” he said.
“I just have a passion for getting involved and just hope to contribute to the passing parade of Manilla and its viability.”
Mr Ridgewell was born and bred in Manilla and says he never found any reason to live anywhere else.
He worked for the former Manilla Shire Council for many years in the parks and garden department, retiring in 2003, and as part of that role took on the care of the former bird aviary that was once such an attraction in the town’s Rotary Park.
Over the years he’s volunteered with Meals on Wheels, Manellae Lodge, the Manilla Senior Citizens and Pensioners Association, Home and Community Care, the Manilla branch of the Australian Red Cross, the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal, the local hospital as a member of the board, the local historical society and the Manilla Christmas Community Carols Group.
He’s also a learn-to-swim instructor at the local pool, volunteers in the primary school canteen and mentors students at the town’s high school.
Mr Ridgewell also serves as a justice of the peace and says hardly a week has gone by in the past 45 years when his signature wasn’t required on a document of some kind.
“I often think of myself as the village scribe, because filling in forms and writing letters or references are so regularly requested,” he smiles.
He credits his parents with instilling in him the passion for volunteering and lending a hand when required, and laughs when he says his mother always described him as “a restless soul who had to constantly keep moving”.
When Mr Ridgewell receives his OAM at Government House in Sydney later in the year, he plans on having two cousins there with him as “representatives of my parents, whose whole life was about caring and sharing”.
