Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is wonderful to follow Pitt the Younger! I always love to follow my friend Wyatt.

I would like to talk to the House about the Gawler Show season launch which happened last Wednesday. Gawler is a regional community in my electorate, small by national standards but, I suppose, big by the standards of the country towns around it like Kapunda, the town I grew up in. At this launch a very important memorial award was made for the choosing of the show book cover. That award has been named in honour of Patrick Mells OAM.

I first met Pat Mells when I first became a candidate. I met him through his work with the Lions at the Gawler railway station, helping people through the Work for the Dole scheme and doing up the station. It is a grand old station reminiscent of Gawler's railroad heritage, and Pat Mells was an absolute champion of doing up that railway station. He was very kind to me as a railway candidate. I never knew Pat's politics, but I suspect they were not of my party. But Pat was a great man. It was very sad when he passed away earlier this year.

He was born at Sutton-at-Hone in Kent, England in 1934. He went to Wilmington Primary School near Dartford in Kent. In 1941 he was evacuated with both his sisters to Devon because of the bombs falling and the like. He later returned to the horticultural college at Hextable and worked in a nursery at the same time. Later he took up an apprenticeship as a carpenter and a joiner. He did his national service at 18 and went with the Royal Air Force, posted to Singapore. In 1955 his family moved to Farnham in southern England, near where my relatives live in Hampshire, resumed working as a carpenter and joiner, became a licensed builder and met his lovely wife, Carol. He was married in 1961 and had his two children, Debra and Andrew.

He emigrated, like so many of his generation, from England to Adelaide. He lived in Fairview Park for a few years before moving to Gawler, where he carried on a business as a home builder. It was really in Gawler that I think Pat found his role in the world. He joined the Gawler Lions Club and was president twice and district governor in 1995 and 1996. He was involved in so many projects in the community and was recipient of the James D Richardson Honour Award and the Melvin Jones Fellowship Award. He was a life member of Lions International. He was Citizen of the Year in Gawler in 2003 and, of course, had the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2007. Importantly, he was a member of the Gawler Show management committee for 10 years, president in 2007-08 and vice-president of the Northern Agricultural Shows Association.

Carol and Pat had five grandchildren, and they all were very proud of him, I am sure. I think he was a great Australian. His life was so reflective of the journey that so many of us have made, and the contribution he made to Gawler in particular was great. That is why the Gawler Show committee decided to honour him with an award and to choose an award given to those who are successful in picking the cover of the show society journal. I think it is a terrific thing for Gawler to do to honour this great citizen of the town. His family have my condolences. I am sure he will always be remembered by our community.