Australia Day award winners announced for Orange

WATCH: Orange’s joint Citizen of the Year for 2024, Rachael Brooking, speaks about what the award win means to her.

Transcript

00:00 Congratulations to all the nominations that we had. We had six and some amazing stories of what

00:06 what it means to be part of a community and what hard work you guys do and

00:11 I congratulate you all for being nominated. We have joint winners today and the joint winners

00:17 of the award for citizen of the year are Rachel Brooking and Helen McNulty.

00:22 [Applause]

00:32 Now this was your second year in a row being nominated. What's that feel like for you?

00:36 Um well pretty special. I mean you know it was so special last year to be nominated and I was

00:41 very humbled because there's so many wonderful people out there that you know do amazing work

00:45 which we've just heard all about at the Australia Day award ceremony. So you know it's it's very

00:51 humbling and I'm really pleased and I'm you know just doing what I whatever I can do to create that

00:58 awareness for this debilitating disease and how it affects our Huntington's families and hoping to

01:03 just spread the education and awareness to get some more specialist services you know eventually

01:07 out here into the central west. There's a long way to go but hopefully you know with more events and

01:12 more marketing and more campaigns and crazy things we can we can get that elevated and

01:16 and get some action happening.

01:19 Sure and you came down to Cook Park knowing you'd been nominated for citizen of the year.

01:22 Did you ever expect to actually win the award?

01:23 Uh look when you're up against people like Helen and the amazing four others that were also

01:29 nominated it's you know you don't take anything for granted and there's definitely no presumptions

01:34 on my my behalf so yeah I was I was sure there would be someone else that had done you know

01:39 some more extravagant things than I have done in my little time

01:44 of raising awareness for Huntington's disease.

01:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]