Avenel man recognised for a lifetime of service

Since then, his unique insights in the finite and precious nature of life have led him to some amazing accomplishments along the way.

This week, those contributions were recognised when he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the people and Parliament of Australia, to education and to conservation.

“It was when I studied at the University of New England in the Department of Animal Physiology that I started to understand the incredible biological inheritance of actually being alive and on this extraordinary planet of the solar system,” Sandy said.

“Such a unique privilege simply to be born — to have survived childhood and to have led a full and rewarding life for a little bit more than eight decades.

“Of the time that life has existed on Earth, homo sapiens have been here for just a second.”

Given the fleeting nature of time, Sandy considers it a responsibility to share memories, learnings and perhaps even ‘glimpses of wisdom’ as he goes.

After lecturing at Geelong’s Marcus Oldham College, he was appointed founding principal of Orange Agricultural College in NSW.

The college required industry experience prior to and during university education.

“This was a new concept in Australia, of having a binary system of tertiary education. The CAEs (centre for adult education) were directly serving industry and community, while the universities would maintain their more academic programs and research,” Sandy said.

“It is of concern to me that so many courses are now provided online, and the emergence of A.I … the experience of living and working together as a group is missed.”

Sandy was later appointed to develop the concept, facilities and programs of an international boarding school in the far north of Thailand as a joint venture with the Thai Royal family.

He then turned to politics, spending three terms as the Federal Member for Calare in the central-west of NSW covering centres like Orange, Bathurst, Parkes, Mudgee and Forbes.

“In those eight years I learnt of how extraordinary so many people were in their adversity,” Sandy said.

“Being an MP provided a unique insight into such a diversity of human condition that few others might experience and some real life experiences that really tested one’s fortitude.”

The experiences were varied and sometimes humorous, such as having a boning knife held against his throat at the Blayney Abattoir.

“Perhaps my school vacation work in the Angliss Meatworks in Melbourne had been advantageous,” Sandy said.

Later, at the Tullamore Show, a red heeler lifted his leg as Sandy addressed the modest and mostly disinterested audience. The owner of the dog was Wally Curran, the communist leader of the Australian Meat Workers Union.

Sandy was sworn in as the Australian Country Party member after the 1975 election. He shared a modest office with Sam Calder, the member for the Northern Territory, who had been a fighter pilot in the war.

“It was a wonderful experience to learn so much about the Territory,“ Sandy said.

“In due course, Bob Hawke became our neighbour and the two of us hit it off with Bob immediately.

“(There was) a lot of banter but we all respected each other. As did most members and senators in those days.”

The 1975 swing to the Coalition remains the largest influx of Coalition members in Australia’s history.

“They were heady days for the Country Party … we were a dedicated team for the interests of country Australia,” Sandy said.

When a party member had to be nominated as the spokesperson for the Australian Council of Local Government Organisations, Sandy was selected.

“When I was appointed to the House of Representatives’ Standing Committee on Environment and Conservation, a new world of opportunity arose,” he said.

Sandy had visited people and places that provided glimpses of natural Australia and its climate that few people experience.

“I was very much involved in the campaign to save the Franklin River, which Bob Hawke as PM achieved. But perhaps the greatest environmental tragedy and vandalism in Australia was the flooding of the pristine Lake Pedder in 1972,” Sandy said.

Sandy had many other achievements for the social good of Australia.

“Since parliamentary days, I worked with the Macfarlane Burnet Medical Research Centre where we set up a shopfront for heroin users with the co-operation of the police in Maribyrnong. There addicts could access methadone therapy and dental services, especially for their children,” Sandy said.

“In 1999, the Howard Government provided “safe haven” centres for Timorese refugees, and the Seymour community responded magnificently for the 820 who were housed at the Puckapunyal Army Barracks.

“More recently, I have been involved in Landcare at a local, state and national council level. Six years on the board of the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, the prime minister’s summit on drought where I represented Landcare Australia, and also in 2020 presenting to hearings of the Fire and National Disasters inquiries.

“A major interest has been the disastrous state of the Darling River and the issues of irrigation licences in both NSW and southern Queensland.”

In the early 2000s, Sandy joined the Australian Council for Children and Parenting.

“This was another wake-up call and I held strong views on children in detention and parental neglect, which to this day is still a national issue of concern,” he said.

“Being part of the local effort to save the Sea Lake Bush Nursing Home was rewarding, as was initiating the relationship between the Tallarook Primary School and the Tol 2/22 Primary School in Rabaul.”

The school commemorates the Tol Massacre where 160 Australians prisoners of war were killed by the Japanese forces in 1942, contrary to the Geneva Convention.

“So in saying enough is enough, I would like to close where I started,” Sandy said.

“What an extraordinary experience for any and all of us homo sapiens, and our homo sapien ancestors to have been born, to have parents that were fertile, to not have been eaten and who survived long enough in good health to rear children and to pass on their genetic inheritance to us.

“As the wonderful Greek philosopher Epicurus said in 300 B.C, it is a great privilege, simply, to be.”