Weddin Shire Council is pleased to announce that Weddin Shire Australia Day Ceremony will be once again be taking place in Taylor Park on Sunday, January 26, starting at 8:00am with the Grenfell RFS BBQ breakfast and entertainment by the Grenfell Town & District Band. Don’t forget the colouring competitions for young children with excellent prizes.
Formal proceedings will begin at 9:00am with the Weddin Shire Australia Day Awards Ceremony.
Make sure you bring a chair and some sunscreen for a great community event. If weather is inclement the ceremony will be moved into the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall, Cnr Weddin & Middle Street. Please keep an eye on the Weddin Shire Council Facebook for an update.
Awards will be presented for the Weddin Shire:
• Community Achievement Award
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• Community Event/Organisation of the Year
• Senior Citizen of the Year
• Citizen of the Year
• Student Achievement Awards for all schools in the Shire and
• Weddin Shire Higher School Certificate Award.
Grenfell’s Australia Day Ambassador is Mr Yianni Johns BFA MA.
Australian Artist, Yianni Johns has been painting for decades and has had exhibitions of his art in many states of Australia, and internationally in New York, Montreal, Paris and Beijing. Yianni has a Bachelor of Arts Fine Art from Curtin University and a Master of Arts from Swinburne University.
Yianni’s work plays with the notion of the beauty of the man made in the landscape. He also works in a style called “Documentary Realism,” where a lot of his inspiration is gathered and collected from the internet. One of his exhibitions in Sydney featured portraits of twenty-one Australian Politicians, where he reverse engineered the portraits and re-made them in a colour field abstract style.
Yianni is also an accomplished Curator with over 80 exhibitions under his belt when he was curating four galleries simultaneously, one on the Central Coast of NSW and Three in Sydney, one in Paddington, one in Sydney’s CBD and another in Rose Bay. Yianni was awarded an Australia Day Award in 2010 for his services to Arts and Culture in the Central Coast Region and was the creative brain and curator behind the Super Art Project in Tuggerah NSW.
Across the Shire, here are the 2025 Australia Day events:
Grenfell - Taylor Park
8:00am - BBQ Breakfast by Grenfell RFS and entertainment by Grenfell Town & District Band
9:00am - Official Opening and presentation of Australia Day Awards
Caragabal - Caragabal Park
8:00am - BBQ breakfast & award presentation. All welcome.
Greenethorpe
9am - Cricket Match: North vs South, Greenethorpe Showgrounds. Followed by a free BBQ lunch & award presentation.
Quandialla
7:00pm - Australia Day Ceremony, Bland Hotel. Free family BBQ & lamingtons. Live music and yabby races.
Bimbi - Fire Shed
6pm - Australia Day BBQ at the Fire Shed.
The events are proudly sponsored by Weddin Shire Council. Assisted by the Australian Government through the National Australia Day Council
Finalists for the Weddin Shire Australia Day 2025 awards are:
- Weddin Shire Higher School Certificate Award: Thi Truong.
Weddin Shire School Youth Achievement Awards:
- Quandialla Public School - Jane Johnston
- Caragabal Public School - Emily Maslin
- St Joseph’s Catholic School - Saskia McLelland
- Grenfell Public School - Daisy Forde
- The Henry Lawson High School - Ryan Toole
Weddin Shire Community Achievement Award:
- Grenfell Hospital & MPS Auxiliary
- Catherine Knapp
- Stanley Jones
Weddin Shire Community Event / Organisation of the Year:
- Grenfell Historical Society
- Grenfell SES
- Grenfell Police & Ambulance
Weddin Shire Senior Citizen of the Year:
- Mary Ann Stokes
Weddin Shire Citizen of the Year Award:
- Lorene Hazell
- Mary Ann Stokes
- Lynne Peterson
- Amanda Brenner
- Peter Mitton
- Caragabal Sheep Races and the Pinnacle Guinea Pig Races
- Peter Keppie
- Anna Brenner
