News

Citizens honoured for community contributions

By Bree Harding

Jan 27, 2026

City of Greater Shepparton Mayor Shane Sali addresses the crowd at Shepparton and Greater Shepparton’s Australia Day awards and citizenship ceremony on January 26. Photo by Megan Fisher

As the temperature soared past 37°C outside, a grateful crowd gathered under the roof of the air-conditioned Eastbank Centre in Shepparton for the city’s Australia Day awards and citizenship ceremony on January 26.

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Musical duo The Wildlings provided the soundtrack between segments of the two-hour program, where City of Greater Shepparton Mayor Shane Sali presented several awards to citizens who were bestowed with honours this year.

MC Matt Dowling welcomed Cr Sali to the stage.

He first congratulated the three Greater Shepparton men who were awarded Medals of the Order of Australia this year — Geoffrey Thompson, Sam Atukorala and Peter Copulos — who were in attendance, before launching into proceedings.

“It's always a great experience being around community that are contributing, obviously to their local organisations or sporting clubs, wherever it might be that they've obviously been recognised by their peers,” Cr Sali said.

“Our Greater Shepparton Citizen of the Year over the past 12 months, Shane O’Sullivan, said to me last year, ‘What do I do now?’, and I said, ‘Well, we don't really have keys to the city anymore, or any of those types of things, but basically, you just keep being the good people that you are, keep contributing to the community that you've been contributing to.

“There have been a number of nominees throughout our small towns today, so I want to congratulate each and every one of you.”

While speaking about gratitude, Cr Sali shared a personal story.

“As I got a little bit older, I've got more appreciation of the journey of my own family, which is from a migrant story ... a number of years ago ... I asked my dad and my uncles, ‘Why did our family nearly 100 years ago choose to come to Australia?’” Cr Sali said.

“My grandparents didn’t speak English, but they had very clear messages: ‘When you come to this great country, in some circumstances, for a life, you must respect one another. You must find ways to contribute to our great community. And you must in every way possible, find out ways to buy into the Australian culture, whether that's volunteering your time at CFA, local community organisations, investing in business, whatever it might be, you find out ways to give back to arguably the best country in the world.’

“Australia gives all Australians the opportunity to live and grow in a free and open society to sharing the common good. In return, we owe Australia our duty as good neighbours and good citizens. Happy Australia Day.”

A citizenship ceremony was held after the awards were presented.

The full list of Australia Day award winners for Shepparton and Greater Shepparton can be found below: