Noble Park’s David Poole, with daughter Tracey, is Greater Dandenong’s Volunteer of the Year. He will join the city’s other award winners at a ceremony tomorrow (Friday).
By Shaun Inguanzo
SAUSAGES first, prestigious award second.
If anything exemplifies David Poole’s Australia Day honour as Greater Dandenong Volunteer of the Year for 2007, then it is his devotion to the Noble Park-Keysborough Lions Club’s sausage sizzle on the same morning.
Despite an early ceremony at the Drum Theatre tomorrow (Friday) where the city will toast all the winners, Mr Poole will first help cook the fat off some tasty sausages at Sandown Racecourse for a large crowd of Greater Dandenong residents.
Mr Poole, 66, lives in Noble Park and has the arduous and unrecognised task of caring for his disabled daughter, Tracey, 38.
Mr Poole’s wife Valerie passed away suddenly 13 years ago from a mysterious blood disease.
And he himself has been forced to take a lighter approach to volunteering this year as he battles through a period of bad health.
But Mr Poole continually displays the same passion that has already earned him the highest honour in Lions Club lore, the Melvin Jones Fellow, and also a Noble Park Chamber of Commerce quiet achiever award.
And he remains modest despite already being named Greater Dandenong’s Citizen of the Year in 1998.
“I enjoy volunteering, but to make a contest of it – in other words to get an award – well I don’t know,” he said.
Tracey, who was born with cerebral palsy, is a massive part of Mr Poole’s life.
“I’m involved (as a volunteer) with Options Victoria, where my daughter goes to in Callendar Road,” he said.
“I’m also on the Special Developmental School council, and am involved with the City of Greater Dandenong’s meals on wheels program.”
Mr Poole said Tracey relied on him because cerebral palsy had severely limited her fine motor skills for actions such as preparing or eating meals.
Cerebral palsy has also inhibited Tracey’s understanding of financial and other living skills.
It is her dependency on Mr Poole that has the volunteer worried about the future.
“I don’t know what will happen to Tracey when I go. I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“She’s lost her mother and coped well with that, but I’ve been living alone with her now for 13 odd years, and while I do get help from neighbours and friends, I’m the one home with her to see her off in the morning and say goodnight in the evening.”
