By Matthew Pearce
Keeping her King’s Birthday honour a secret was a difficult task for Margaret Whitchurch, but the Rockhampton community stalwart is modest about her OAM, which she received for service to a range of community organisations dating back decades.
Ms Whitchurch said she first heard she was being considered for a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) a couple of months ago, then “promptly forgot about it”.
Two weeks before the King’s Birthday Honours List was announced, she was notified that her OAM had been approved by the Governor-General, but was sworn to secrecy until the King’s Birthday.
“Those two weeks felt like a month,” she said.
“The email was in the strictest confidence… I’d be having a social drink with friends and it’d be on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say anything.”
The Range resident will officially receive her OAM later this year at Government House in Brisbane.
Her history of community involvement dates back to her days in Emerald, where she first joined Inner Wheel – an organisation she is still part of, 40 years later.
“We lived in the country, where everybody helps everybody and you get involved,” she said.
“It was a case of, if there was something on, you just got in and helped.
“This was when we didn’t have social media, so volunteering was also a social outing and a way of communicating with people in the days before they could send you a text.”
Ms Whitchurch’s late husband Charlie was a GP and served the community of Emerald for 28 years.
Later he worked at Rockhampton Hospital, where one of his colleagues was Dr Jeanette Young, now Governor of Queensand, who sent Ms Whitchurch a “lovely letter” congratulating her on her OAM.
Dr Whitchurch was only attending doctor at the scene of the Medway Creek (Bogantungan) rail disaster in 1960. The tragedy saw seven people die, including two children.
“My husband is the one one who should be getting this award, not me,” she said.
Ms Whitchurch has held a variety of high profile positions in Inner Wheel, including chair of District A77 in 1998-1999 and 2021, Inner Wheel Australia president from 2012-2013 and International Inner Wheel board member from 2013 to 2014.
She has wrapped Christmas presents for the Heart Foundation every Christmas for 30 years, and been a crisis support worker with Lifeline since 1994.
“The misconception with Lifeline is that we help people… We listen to people, and hope that we’ve enabled them to help themselves,” she said.
A parishioner at St Joseph’s Catholic Parish, she is also a member of the parish’s Bereavement Team, helping grieving family members organise funerals.
“It’s a matter of sitting with the family, asking what songs they want…. Most people have never done it before and have no idea what the procedure is.”
A founding member of the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s Rockhampton Auxiliary, she served as the group’s president for 10 years, but has stepped back in recent years.
“In the early days we did everything ourselves, including turning up to the morning teas early to make sandwiches and bringing cakes that we had made,” she said.
A past student of St Ursula’s, she currently serves as director on the school’s board.
Other honours she has received include a National Emergency Medal (Queen’s Medal) for her work with Lifeline Community Recovery, starting with the floods in Emerald.
“When someone’s lost everything, that’s when people get to the breaking point. On the other side, you also get people who’ll say ‘don’t worry about me, there’s somebody worse than I am’.”
She has also received the Margarette Golding Award from International Inner Wheel International, one of only two people in the world to receive it at the time, as well as Lifeline’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Zonta Club of Rockhampton Living Treasure Award.
“I said at the time I’d rather be a Living Treasure than Buried Treasure.”
Still ‘gobsmacked’ about her OAM recognition, she is modest about her achievements.
“I don’t deserve this OAM any more than anyone else, we’ve all put in the whole nine yards. I always say I’m accepting it on behalf of everybody I’ve worked with,” she said.
She said the community groups in Rockhampton were in need of new blood.
“It doesn’t matter which organisation you talk to… Rotary, Lions, RFDS, they all need volunteers, young people that can replace the ones who are getting older,” she said.
“The Inner Wheel Rockhampton Sunset Club in particular is looking for new members.”
She hopes to continue her work in the community “as long as my body lets me”.
“It’s an interesting life and if I didn’t have anything to do I’d probably go crazy,” she said.
“And in the end, I think you get back a lot more back than you give.”