NEWS DESK
Top citizens celebrated with awards A LOCAL netball pioneer had been named Kingston’s citizen of the year for 2019. Helen Hollis was awarded the honour at council’s Australia Day awards ceremony on 26 January. Ms Hollis founded the EdiAsp Eagles Junior Netball Club in 2003, and went on to found the Edithvale Aspendale Netball Club in 2009. Edithvale-Aspendale has gone on to become a powerhouse club, winning 24 premierships over 10 years of competition. Ms Hollis’ work in netball extends beyond the clubs she founded. She also has lobbied for extra facilities and courts in Bonbeach and Chelsea. Other nominees for the awards included Brian Hunt, Feliciano Roxas, Felix Jia, Cr Geoff Gledhill, Julia Reichstein, Les Baguley, and Bill David. The Chelsea Community Christmas Lunch was named the community group of the year. The group provides a free lunch on Christmas day for people in need, and last year welcomed 140 guests. Other community groups nominated were the Dingley Village Men’s Shed, Friends of Mordialloc College, and Legends of the Skies. Kingston mayor Georgina Oxley said “it’s great to hear positive, uplifting stories of people given their all to make Kingston a fantastic place to live.” “We have some amazing volunteers in Kingston and these awards are a great way to thank them for their efforts and acknowledge the positive impact they make,” she said. For more information on the citizen of the year nominees visit kingston.vic.gov.au/ australiaday
THE team behind the Chelsea Community Christmas Lunch celebrate their award win. Picture: Supplied
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Australian classic of love, heartache and hope PLAYS and playwrights go in and out of fashion but some endure and speak to each subsequent generation. Ray Lawler’s much-loved tale of Queensland cane cutters and Melbourne barmaids has endured, not through nostalgia, nor because it spawned a new age in Australian writing, but because the characters and their dilemmas are so true, so beautifully observed, so humorous and so poignant. A triumph at its 1955 Melbourne premiere, followed by a national tour and hugely successful season in London’s West End where it won an award for best new play, this production of the Australian classic Summer of the Seventeenth Doll celebrates the 65th anniversary of this iconic play. For sixteen years, two Queensland cane cutters have worked the punishing routine up north
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Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News
29 January 2020
in the sugar cane fields for seven months of the year and travelled back to Melbourne to meet up for five months of partying and romance with their barmaid girlfriends. This seventeenth summer everything is different. One of the barmaids has ‘settled down’ and married a city bloke so a replacement date has to be found. This ‘offseason’ proves challenging for them all. Christine Harris & HIT productions presents Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll, the famous love tale by Ray Lawler at Frankston Arts Centre. This production has been masterfully directed by the award-winning Denny Lawrence. See this iconic play at the Frankston Arts Centre on Wednesday 11 March, 7.30pm. Tickets: $27 - $60 Bookings: 03 9784 1060 or thefac.com.au