‘Humbled’ and ‘honoured’ were the words Mr Kinder used to describe his win.

The Windellama local has a passion for his community as a volunteer with a number of different local groups.

“I feel quite humbled, but it’s definitely a great honour and I think it’s wonderful,” Mr Kinder told the Post.

“I feel privileged to be amongst so many members of our community who ‘pitch in’ and volunteer in so many other areas, and I guess its because I know how hard they work that I was surprised to pick up the award myself here today.”

Mr Kinder has been a member of the Windellama Rural Fire Service since 2000, the Windellama Community First Response Group, a member of the Windellama Progress Association committee, and a congregation member at St Bartholomew’s Church.

“I’ve been very privileged over the last five years to have been consistently voted back as president and as Deputy Captain of the Windellama RFS brigade,” he said.

“I think it does a wonderful service in the community. Also out there is the Community First Response Group, sponsored by the State Emergency Service and they’ve operated for the best part of a decade, providing very early advanced first aid care for people and to try and ‘hold the fort’ until the ambulance can arrive. They invited me to see if I could spend a bit of time working with them and next thing I knew it was ‘could you help us with some storm work, some rescue operations, floodboat training, etc.”

Over time Mr Kinder became the chief training officer on the Goulburn team, which then took him on to become Unit Controller out at Windellama, which Mr Kinder says opened only recently.

“We’re recruiting vigorously at the moment, so for anyone in Windellama (or Goulburn) who wants to serve their community, that would be great,” he said.

He also expressed his pleasure at being part of such a great village community in Windellama.

“We have a very vibrant community out there at Windellama,” he said.

“We have a very passionate historical society, and the area is very rich in its history, from the old Chinese gold mining times to Aboriginal artefacts, etc which are great to preserve.

“We’ve built a little museum out there which the Historical Society works very hard at. I also have the privilege of being part of the congregation of St Bartholomew’s Church, as it is a very historic building with a little graveyard which is registered with the NSW National Trust, and so we try and keep that in good order. So every time you turn the page, there is always another job to do at Windellama.”

He praised both Member for Goulburn Pru Goward and Goulburn Australia Day Ambassador Warren Brown for what they thought it meant to be a true Australian.

“Both speakers were noting in different ways the biggest challenges we face, such as being able to be resilient to work together in times of natural disaster such as fire, flood and storm,” Mr Kinder said.

“But we face new challenges and what’s wonderful is that our community can come together and just stand shoulder to shoulder. We will not be affected by some of the new challenges such as terrorism.

We’re going to stand and protect our freedoms, our homeland, and look after one another.

“Those messages I thought rang true, not only just with me, but I was watching the whole crowd nodding and I must admit there was a little bit of a ‘lump in the throat’ kind of stuff.”