Byron shire honours local achievers

Byron shire’s Australia Day award winners were announced at a special celebration at Byron Bay Services Club yesterday.

Delta Kay, Holley Somerville-Knott, Sage Nara and Elizabeth Watts have all scooped categories for Byron Shire’s Citizen of the Year.

Community Event of the Year has been awarded to the Byron Bay Writers Festival.

Mayor Simon Richardson said of Byron Shire’s Citizen of the Year, Delta Kay, has ‘many admirable skills and qualities including her ongoing enthusiasm, leadership, ability to connect and educate, patience and her motivation to build on her own personal awareness of Indigenous culture and her knowledge as an Aboriginal woman.’

Byron Shire’s Young Citizen of the Year, Holley Somerville-Knott, has been an activist since she was eight years old, where she founded her charity, Stardust Entertainment.

Now 12, her charity has been selected as one of seven global charities to be a recipient of Reachers Philanthropy Global Social Media Person of the Year Sage Nara volunteers as a marine radio operator for Marine Rescue Brunswick Heads and has also been involved with local AFL and is a regular volunteer patrol captain at the Brunswick Heads Surf Life Saving Club.

Volunteer of the Year, Elizabeth Watts, is well recognised as a generous and committed community member; as a volunteer, she has given her time to Driver Reviver Yelgun (ten years), Meals on Wheels (30 years) and St Martin’s Anglican Op Shop (ten years).

Liz has also been on the Mullumbimby Swimming Club Committee for 16 years and has been involved in raising funds for Variety, the children’s charity, for six years.

Community Event of the Year was awarded to The Byron Bay Writers Festival.

From humble beginnings in 1995, after 20 years it has become Australia’s leading regional writers festival, and  over the past decade has raised $70,000 towards the new Byron Bay Library via Friends of the Library.