Congratulations to City of Tea Tree Gully volunteer David Adamson for reaching 45 years of service!

Mr Adamson began volunteering at the Road and Cycle Safety Centre in 1980 shortly after it opened – and he’s been there ever since.

“I used to ride past here. It was newly erected … I would rave on to my wife, ‘look at that, the council spent a lot of money on that place. It's all locked up, and it would be lovely to take the children in’,” he said.

“That day when we rode home, in the Messenger press on the front page was a little green square advertisement from Council asking for volunteers.

“My wife tore it out and she said, ‘here you are, put your money where your mouth is’.

“So I rang the number and arranged to become a volunteer.”

Mr Adamson said the relationships he’s built with visitors and volunteers has been the highlight over the years.

“We’ve had some tremendous people volunteering here,” Mr Adamson said.

“We've worked together for so long, we sort of automatically work, one does one thing, one does the other. But we support each other in the things that we do.”

Being vision-impaired, Mr Adamson said as part of children’s road and cycle safety education, it was also important to teach them to take care of other vulnerable people.

“Sometimes children stop me out there, especially if I've got my cane folded up and they say, ‘How did you break your cane’? And so I show them how it undoes,” he said.

“We get kindergarten kids and I say to them, ‘hang on, I need someone to help me across the road, because I'm a granddad’.

“Children don't always like to hold onto someone’s hand when they're crossing the road, and so you try and reverse it and say it's their job to hang on to your hands and take you across the road.”

Nowadays Mr Adamson is joined by two of his grandsons, who have also begun volunteering at the Road and Cycle Safety Centre.

“It's the ability, as volunteers, to give something back to the community that we live in, that we love.”

Some other milestones this year that deserve an honourable mention include:

• 30 years of service – Glen Nalty (Dog obedience)
• 40 years of service – Sheila Smith (Dog obedience)

Overall, the City of Tea Tree Gully is fortunate enough to have more than 380 volunteers over 121 programs.

We sincerely thank them all for their service. Our City would not be the same without their dedication, skill and care.