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Council meeting · 27 January 2026

Australia Day at the Civic Centre, the Tirhatuan Ward award and street trees

2 min 44 s · Item 5, Reports by Councillors · Reported as ward councillor

0:001:22:30

This report runs from 19:54 to 22:38 of a 1 h 22 min meeting. Watch the full meeting on the council webcast.

Summary

I acknowledged the two memorials read at the meeting, and reported on presenting the Tirhatuan Ward award at Rowville Primary School's final assembly of the year. I spoke about Australia Day at the Civic Centre, the Mayor's first citizenship ceremonies and the Rotary Club barbecue at the arboretum. In the ward, most correspondence has been about street trees and gum trees shedding bark, with street sweepers out more often in response.

The Australia Day barbecue at the arboretum.
The Australia Day barbecue at the arboretum.
Photo from the month of this reportPhoto from the month of this report

Transcript

Edited from the meeting's auto-generated captions.

Thank you, Mayor. I just acknowledge the two memorials we had tonight. It's incredible to learn more about the people that contribute so much to our community over decades. So, thank you, Councillor Pearce and Councillor Williams, for reading those out.

Councillor Duncan reminded me of the ward award that I presented at Rowville Primary School in the week before Christmas, at the final assembly of the year. That was the Tirhatuan award. I think we've all got a ward award, and I think most of them are based around students that go above and beyond when it comes to community spirit. And it was a great pleasure to join Anne Babich, the principal at Rowville, and her team to present that. With the excitement of school holidays approaching, there was an additional buzz as well.

Yesterday, here, Australia Day was a wonderful day, and I congratulate you, Madam Mayor, for officiating, or presiding over, your first ceremonies formally. You did a great job. Great speech, some really interesting personal insight as well. So thank you for the way you managed those through the day. I attended the first ceremony and then headed up to the barbecue at the arboretum, which I think was a good start for us. Certainly my interest is to acknowledge Australia Day and to put on something that's appropriate in recognising the day for the community, and yesterday was a good start, I think, for us to build on in future years.

In a time of unrest and conflict across the world, the ceremony here yesterday was a moment to come together, walk together, peace, unity, and just feel that community spirit butt up against the conflict and unrest. So it was a great day and a really good reminder. And thank you to the Rotary Club for putting on the barbecue. They do a mean sausage sizzle, and it was on full show yesterday up at the arboretum.

Some correspondence over the last month with residents of my ward has related to a fair bit around street trees, and particularly gum trees that are, I think, in shedding season at the moment. There's some streets, Taylors Lane and Turramurra Drive, that just have bark sheeting off. And I've actually noticed the street sweepers out a little bit more in the past week, attending to that. So I think we've responded to some of the residents that had some concerns about the bark that was shedding.

But, as Councillor Cooper said, a month not as frenetic as November and December. So, time to catch up and think about the year ahead. Thank you, Mayor.