By CASEY NEILL
THE Noble Park Community Awards recognised the suburb’s top contributors at a gala dinner on Saturday night.
Keith Maxwell and Gerard Koe shared the community award for showing steady leadership.
Mr Maxwell has been a member of Apex and Rotary clubs for about 25 years and has been instrumental in overseeing many community projects in aged care facilities and schools.
He’s the current president of Ongoing Change which helps youths with self-esteem issues and runs the Noble Park businessmen’s club.
Mr Koe facilitates seminars for the Cyrene Centre and has run or participated in about 32 sessions in any financial year.
Clergy, medical staff, clients, volunteers and participants from all cultures attend the sessions, which cover difficult issues of modern life.
The sporting achievement award went to Wayne Webster for his work in promoting the local sporting community and being an excellent role model for local youngsters.
He started his football career with the Noble Park juniors in 1971 and continued playing until a medical condition turned his passion for football to coaching.
Mr Webster coached six premierships and two runners-up in the Dandenong and District Junior Football League (DDJFL) and Victorian Metropolitan Football League (VMFL).
Garry Webster took home the youth services award for his work with the Noble Park Football Club Juniors.
The treasurer has been a role model to many of the juniors, co-ordinating development and afterschool programs, performing boundary umpire duties, marking lines and helping in the canteen.
Noble Park Community Centre Art Show chairwoman Heather Duggan won the cultural and services award.
The show’s now in its eighth year and showcases works by local artists from all backgrounds and schools.
The foundation award recognises selfless lifetime service and commitment to helping build the foundation of the “struggle town” ethos on which Noble Park was founded.
Lifetime Noble Park resident Fred Woodman took home this year’s award.
His watercolour exhibition Local Heathland Flora features 95 plant portraits has been on exhibition throughout the city over the years.
The portraits are of plants that still exist in the Alex Wilkie Nature Reserve and Coomoora Woodland and some took three years to complete.
Mr Woodman continues to record and preserve flora history and has witnessed the changing faces of Noble Park in his lifetime.
He’s also a valuable contributor to the Noble Park Community Centre Art Show.
A posthumous award went to Russell O‘Brien, who was instrumental in delivering innovative education programs when he was chairman of the Noble Park-Keysborough Drug Committee.
