Dynamic duo named Spirit of Habana on Australia Day HABANA AUSTRALIA DAY: Habana kids Isla Missin, Lisa Ford, Audra Missin and Keira Missin teamed up to make an Aussie flag in the sand. Picture: Danielle Jesser
People and Places Danielle Jesser
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Dynamic duo Rod and Joy Muller are this year’s winners of the Spirit of Habana Award.
Not surprisingly Joy was hard at work serving up one of the hundreds of pies sold on Australia Day when Cr Lawrence Bonaventura announced the couple as co-winners.
The annual award celebrates those who volunteer their time to improve community life for the Habana district.
Premium Content Subscriber only Tara Miko Journalist Tara joined the company in 2010 after graduating with a journalism and politics degree from Griffith University in Brisbane. After first working in newspapers in the Bowen Basin in Central Queensland, she joined the team at The Chronicle in 2013. In September that year she took over the reins of the Rural Weekly, and has been on the crime desk in Toowoomba since 2015. Login to follow It was a full house as Mackay celebrated the best of its citizens at the Australia Day awards gala dinner on Monday. More than 500 people packed out the MECC to applaud the 141 nominees across eight categories.
Russell McLennan has spent the past 44 years volunteering his time for something he loves with men and women he respects and admires.
So it doesnât feel like a job and when he accepted the Lori Burgess Community Volunteer award, it was on behalf of the team.
Itâs a credit to him personally, though, that the longstanding VMR Mackay volunteer was called to the MECC stage on Monday night at the Mackay 2021 Australia Day awards.
âIâm not in it for the awards, Iâm in it because I enjoy doing it,â Mr McLennan said.
âThis is not just for me; this is for the whole team of VMR Mackay.
Because Mabel Quakawoot doesnât do things for âshowâ.
She does them because theyâre right, and plans to fight on for her next passion â getting Mackay a soup kitchen.
âI like to do things quietly and make sure those people feel comfortable,â she says.
âWhen you help people, they donât want other people to know that youâre helping them, so I go about that quietly and thatâs how I work.
âI donât tell people that I do this or do that but Greg (Williamson) knew that I was in the Womenâs Royal Australian Air Force.â