Everyday Canberrans celebrated in King's Birthday honours list

This year, 28 recipients of distinguished titles have been listed as living in the ACT. The number is a big dip from 2023 when almost 70 ACT residents were recognised in the list.

The awards include medals for public servants who made waves in governance as well as crosses for military personnel committed to defending the country and its interests.

But it's the day-to-day efforts of people who volunteered their skills, talent and time that have been appointed as a member of the Order of Australia (general division) that capture the eye.

Established in 1975, this honour recognises not-so-ordinary citizens for their hard work and outstanding achievements. Their peers have nominated 14 such Canberrans whose service spans across years of advocacy, philanthropy and pioneering.

Sister Jane Keogh AM, who became a nun at 16, was eternally grateful for the more than 30 years she served as a teacher and school principal.

"I was a born teacher and I loved seeing children grow and helping them to love learning," the Brigidine sister said.

But in 2001, she said she was shaken to her core when the government refused to let a Norwegian freighter - MV Tampa - carrying more than 400 asylum seekers enter Australian waters.

"I couldn't understand how Australia would take that attitude to refugees. I felt like my world had fallen a bit apart. I was so proud of Australia and proud to be Australian. I couldn't understand it," she said.

As a human rights advocate and part of the ACT Refugee Action Campaign, Sister Keogh worked with asylum seekers detained in South Australia, Papua New Guinea and Manus Island.

She has contributed to at least 130 refugees finding new homes in other countries like Canada.

The nun told The Canberra Times she was keeping busy by helping to raise $10,000 a month to feed and provide electricity to about 50 refugees still in PNG.

Seasoned psychologist and community health leader Gregory Aldridge OAM is best known for leading EveryMan, a men's support service in Canberra's central business district.

His organisation's work in housing support, violence prevention and behaviour change programs is backed by decades of experience working with children and young people with the most urgent and challenging needs.

"I was always drawn to people whose lives were basically messy, I guess, because my life when I was young was pretty messy, too," Mr Aldridge said.

As a teenager, he had already interacted with the justice system and had a probation officer at 16. He remembered the help from not only well-meaning but well-trained people, and most importantly, that this was not common.

"It was my job to make sure that more of that help was directed towards people who couldn't afford it," he said.

Mr Aldridge revealed the people they often worked with had had long histories of support failure from when they were children to living in foster care to the first time they went to juvenile detention. He said "intervention after intervention" never really helped his clients.

"We tend to work with people who have had their can kicked down the road around them for so long that they reached the end of the road and it's full of tin cans," Mr Aldridge said.

Of all the men's health awards for EveryMan, the 68-year-old is most proud of their ACT NAIDOC award for non-Indigenous contribution.

In the late 1960s, Yohanni Bey Johns OAM was cultural adviser to then-prime minister John Gorton.

On a day when the country's foremost leader was worried about his engagements coming up the following week, Mr Gorton allegedly asked Ms Johns: "I go in next week, how am I going to get a suit?"

"Apparently ... mum pointed at the phone in The Lodge and said, 'There's a phone, pick it up'," her son Michael Johns recounted.

"She's always had a fire in her belly."

Ms Johns, who is living with dementia, grew up under Japanese occupation in Indonesia. Mr Johns treasured chats in Japanese with his 95-year-old mother.

"She came from a village in Sumatra, married dad and the world was her oyster," he said.

Ms Johns taught Indonesian studies and language at the Australian National University from 1963 into the 1990s. She was the founding member of the university's Faculty of Asian Studies in 1961.

She is a former matriarch of Canberra's Indonesian community and in 2022 the family set up the Tony and Yohanni Johns Indonesia Humanities Fund at the ANU.

In his 55 years as a doctor and general practitioner in Canberra, Dr Chi Wang Lai OAM has most enjoyed helping to bring babies into the world and caring for the elderly.

The 85-year-old worked as a medical officer at Canberra Hospital and the formerly known Calvary Hospital for more than three decades.

And for 18 years, Dr Lai shared his love and knowledge of medicine with thousands of students at the ANU Medical School and the University of Sydney Clinical School.

He was crucial in setting up Canberra's After Hours Locum Medical Service (CALMS) in 1971, which is still owned and operated by GPs.

"I loved delivering babies and enjoyed aged care. I'm grateful for the loyalty of my patients who followed me for over 50 years. I'm sad I'm retired but I felt it was time for me to go," said Dr Lai, who had been working until July 2019.

Additionally, the health expert co-founded an education fund for Cambodian students in 2010 and volunteered at the Indo-China Refugee Association for 20 years.

MORE CANBERRA HONOURS:

An environmental poet since 1972, Dr Mark O'Connor OAM has been recognised for his work in advocacy, activism and demystifying Australian poetry for young minds.

The prize-winning Canberran, who has published a dozen poetry books and has a page on Wikipedia, is well-known for identifying the main conversations that seemed to occur between Australian poets.

Dr O'Connor said poets mostly spoke about subjects ranging from the experience of Aboriginal people, settlers and women to adjusting to a "strange landscape" for which a European language, like English, lacked the vocabulary.

"Everything we attempt to do is undone by developers ... what we do with volunteer labour is opposed by people with very well-funded teams working in the other direction," the former council member at the Australian Conservation Foundation said.

Often feeling like he was working in a dry creek making no progress, Dr O'Connor said it was nice to know his efforts were valued.