THE Australia Day celebrations in Cobargo were held in the town's packed-out school of arts hall on January 26.
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During the ceremony, May Blacka was announced as the Cobargo Community Citizen of the Year for 2016.
The award was given to Ms Blacka due to the many years she has spent fundraising for the community: she helped raise money to build the Cobargo Pool in the 1960s, supported league and union clubs and recently has been raising funds for Cancer Research Advocate Bikers.
Ms Blacka, who has lived in the Cobargo area since 1957, said she was very appreciative of the award and thanked everyone for supporting her.
While Bega Valley Shire's Australia Day ambassador Dick Smith did not drop in, guest speaker on the day Helen Schaefer gave a courageous and inspiring speech that was met with thunderous applause at its conclusion.
"There is no room... for harsh judgement of others and their behaviours."
- Helen Schaefer
From 1990 to 2013 Ms Schaefer was a vet in Cobargo - now she is the district veterinarian for South East Local Land Services – so had plenty of entertaining stories to tell about life in the small town.
For instance, one mistake she occasionally made was getting the names of owners and their pets mixed up.
On a more personal note, she talked about how she was diagnosed with postnatal depression after her second daughter was born.
"What followed was a year from hell," Ms Schaefer said.
While one year later she came out the other side, having learnt a lot about herself on the way, about 10 years later depression hit again.
Aside from her husband and people in the health profession, no one knew about the struggle she was going through as she tried to keep everything normal and just go through the motions.
Through these experiences she learnt "very intimately" that no one can understand what other people are dealing with.
"There is no room... for harsh judgement of others and their behaviours," Ms Schaefer said.
"We can't understand other people's baggage and some of us carry more than others."
Also, the captains from Cobargo and Quaama Public Schools gave speeches titled "what Australia Day means to me".
Quaama School captain Bianca Van Tilburg said Australia Day was a chance to celebrate "what is great about Australia and what we we have achieved over the year".
The other Quaama School captain, Mackenzie Moore, said she had grown up in the Cobargo area and loved how she could easily go camping and to the beach.
"I'm very lucky that I get to enjoy such a beautiful country," she said.
