ELMHURST resident Geoff Penna was recently invited to Government House in Melbourne to be officially presented with his Order of Australia Medal.<\/p>\n
Geoff Penna OAM was named in the annual Queen\u2019s Birthday honours list for a lifetime of service to the communities of Ararat and Elmhurst.<\/p>\n
His award was for service to numerous organisations across the community including as President of Elmhurst Bush Nursing Centre, Secretary of the Elmhurst Development Group, Secretary of Elmhurst Landcare and previous board positions with Marian College, Ararat College, Ararat Retirement Village and Ararat Regional Business Association.<\/p>\n
Mr Penna and his wife Jean, daughter Lyndal and grandchildren William and Annie attended the official function at Government House for the presentation of awards by Victorian Governor Linda Dessau.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very prestigious occasion and there was an overwhelming sense of togetherness because everyone was there for a common purpose. It was a very memorable occasion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very choreographed, they said you don\u2019t have to use your own intuition, you just follow the orders,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they read out my name and community involvement in Elmhurst, the Governor looked me in the eye and said \u2018my you have been busy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Penna said he has enormous support from family and his community.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family have to share this. I can\u2019t do it alone and my wife Jean has slaved at home and in the business while I ducked out to meetings, conferences and fires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJean and I work well together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just one of a number of people who work for the local community,\u201d Mr Penna said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ELMHURST resident Geoff Penna was recently invited to Government House in Melbourne to be officially presented with his Order of Australia Medal.
\nGeoff Penna OAM was named in the annual Queen\u2019s Birthday honours list for a lifetime of service to the communities of Ararat and Elmhurst.
\nHis award was for service to numerous organisations across the community including as President of Elmhurst Bush Nursing Centre, Secretary of the Elmhurst Development Group, Secretary of Elmhurst Landcare and previous board positions with Marian College, Ararat College, Ararat Retirement Village and Ararat Regional Business Association.
\nMr Penna and his wife Jean, daughter Lyndal and grandchildren William and Annie attended the official function at Government House for the presentation of awards by Victorian Governor Linda Dessau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-1601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/penna.jpg?fit=1073%2C1073&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-pP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}