ANNETTE Warby of Tathra said she was “flabbergasted” when she found out she was the Bega Chamber of Commerce Community Citizen of the Year.
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As one of the first – and still current – members of the Bega and District Nursing Home Auxiliary, Ms Warby has been helping better the lives of the region’s elderly for the past four decades.
She has also been the auxiliary’s treasurer for all of those 40 years.
“I was just doing something I felt needed to be done,” Ms Warby said.
“Working with Meals on Wheels all those many years ago, I discovered people were disappearing.
“When I asked after them, they were being taken to a place with just a bed for older people.
“Some of them had never been out of the Bega Valley before and I thought it was terrible.”
Ms Warby remembered one of the elderly matrons had been taken to Sydney to recover after breaking a hip and was in tears when her family arrived “to take me home”.
“But they couldn’t bring her home – there was nowhere to take her to,” Ms Warby said.
Around the same time, the council was being pestered to build a nursing home and called a public meeting.
For one reason or another, Ms Warby was unable to attend although she thought it “a fantastic idea”.
However, when the resulting committee called for the formation of an auxiliary, she made it to that meeting and has been involved ever since.
“I’m very proud of what everyone has done,” Ms Warby said.
“All I have to see is what has happened since there was that first thought 40 years ago.
“Now we have the nursing home, Casuarina, The Oaks and there are packages in the community to help people stay in their own homes for longer.
“Bega is so lucky with so much support for the elderly.”
Ms Warby said she thought the auxiliary had raised around $400-500,000 for the nursing home - an incredible amount if you consider much of the fundraising other than donations is done through catering events and regular raffles.
“I guess you could say I started early,” Ms Warby said with a laugh.
“I started raising money when I was 12 – I held a concert at home, poor Mum.
“It went quite well and I thought ‘oh that was good’, so I thought I’d do another one and booked the church hall – I would have been 13 at the time.”
Now, the auxiliary has its eyes on tracks for the nursing home ceilings so mobile chairs can be moved around the home.
The estimated cost - $250,000!
However - “we’re over halfway there at this stage,” Ms Warby said.
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