Award for golfing hero as 47 become our latest citizens on Australia Day

Ray Wilson, tireless charity worker and Strathfield golfing pro, was been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2012 honour roll.

The honour comes as Strathfield welcomed 47 new Australians and announced its citizens of the year for 2012  at an Australia Day ceremony.

Strathfield mayor, Cr Paul Barron, said: “Today we celebrate our rich culture and we celebrate our new citizens. I feel most honoured that we welcome our new citizens into the Strathfield community."

Wilson's honour was announced from Canberra, where he joined such notable Australians as Geoffrey Rush (Australian of the Year) and sporting legends Ricky Ponting and Stirling Mortlock on the 2012 Roll of Honour.

His citation simply says:  “For service to the sport of golf, and to the community through a range of charitable organisations”.

But it hardly seems to do justice to the huge contribution Wilson and his Rotary colleagues Niall King, Les Hockley and Geoff Thoroughgood make to any community event in the Strathfield area.

Wielding barbeque tongs to serve up sausages in the name of countless causes, few local residents won’t have encountered Wilson and his good humoured mates. 

And even as the award was announced yesterday, Wilson and his colleagues were working towards another record-breaking charity golf day and dinner next month at the Strathfield Golf Club on behalf of the Trish Foundation, which funds multiple sclerosis research.

The unseasonal Australia Day wet weather wasn’t enough to dampen the mood as Strathfield welcomed its newest citizens at the Australia Day Ceremony.

Barron, Member for Watson, Tony Burke, Strathfield MP, Charles Casuscelli, councillors and Australia Day Ambassador Tony Hasham were on hand with a message of multiculturalism.

Two young outstanding Strathfield residents were awarded Citizen and Young Citizen of the Year for their contribution to the Australian and Strathfield community.

Mohit Tolani, 23 volunteers with a number of organisations including the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Program, the Edmund Rice Foundation and several refugee support organisations.

“It’s important that we have a level of tolerance in our community because it makes a different,” said Tolani. “Helping and welcoming someone new into the community makes all the difference in that person’s life.”

Matthew Nicholl, 18 raised over $100,000 for a village in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and will continue his humanitarian work in the region for next eight months.

“It was an eye opening experience when I first went,” he said. “There is such a vast difference between what we have and what they have. But in the spirit of citizenship, they are such a loving community which is what I see here in Strathfield.”

Families of the new citizens snapped pictures of their loved ones as they received their certificates and enjoyed a morning tea.

Burke said it is a great step in Australian history to see that Strathfield has such a diverse and multicultural community.

“By becoming and Australian, you build on our nation but bringing your culture into our community,” he said. “It’s your stories that makes Australia’s story.”

As if to underscore Strathfield's multicultural successes, shopkeepers from Homebush West hung cabbages outside their businesses as a good luck offering to lions from the Jun Wu Koon Shaolin Double Dragon Kung Fu Academy to kick off Chinese New Year celebrations.

The new Year of the Dragon is a most auspicious occasion.