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Top award for volunteer

A Karratha woman was named St John Ambulance WA Volunteer of the Year at the organisation’s Country Conference recently.

Megan Hinkley who has been volunteering in Karratha for three years said she was “absolutely blown away” when she received the award.

“In the end the award has got my name on it but it’s not mine it’s the Karratha Sub Centre’s because without them I’m not a volunteer,” she said.

She thanked all the Karratha volunteers and everyone who supported her in the role.

“My husband, he puts up with a lot, he has just got to take on the role of looking after the kids if I get a call,” she said.

“Every call that comes into town goes through my phone, so he (my husband) has got to get used to waking up in the middle of the night, so he does put up with a lot.”

As a volunteer, every week for Mrs Hinkley is completely different with the number and types of incidents she responds to always changing.

Mrs Hinkley said she was surprised and honoured to receive the award.

“What happened is all my colleagues at the sub-centre were asked by our community paramedic to nominate someone and whoever got the most votes was put in as the Karratha nominee,” she said.

“None of us heard anything else about it and then when we got to the conference on Friday my picture was up to say I was one of the six finalists for Western Australia.

“None of us even knew, even our community paramedic didn’t know.” Karratha Community Paramedic James Byles said Mrs Hinkley was a very deserving winner of the award.

“Megan is very involved, not just with volunteering her service in the ambulance but also with mentoring and training other people,” he said.

Mr Byles said the award was a fantastic reflection on the quality of volunteers in Karratha.

St John Ambulance WA chief executive Tony Ahern said the awards thanked and acknowledged the people who gave up their time and energy to service the community.

“We have more than 3000 volunteers who help SJAWA in the regions and their contribution is enormous,” he said.