Gerroa’s Andy Halliday has received a Sports NSW Distinguished Long Service Award for his outstanding achievements and contribution as a volunteer to the sport of kayaking.

Andy has been a committee member of the Shoalhaven Canoe and Kayak Club for over 25 years, the same period in which he has been a surf lifesaver on patrol at Werri Beach.

Andy grew up in the UK and first saw canoe slalom on TV in the 1972 Olympics. He took to it like a duck to water.

In 1995, he moved to Australia and soon joined the Shoalhaven Canoe and Kayak Club which meets at the Bomaderry Aquatic Centre.

Andy has canoed all over the world in Nepal, Costa Rica and South Africa and one of the highlights of his involvement in the club was the World Masters’ Games held in Sydney in 2009. 

“We are only a small club but we managed to put together three teams to train and compete in the Canoe Polo competition, coming away with silver and bronze medals,” he says.

Andy competing at the Australian Championships

Carolyn Campbell, the Chair of Sport NSW, says that volunteers like Andy are the backbone of community sport in NSW.

She says that they are the dedicated, hard-working individuals, the unsung heroes on which sports clubs and sports communities are built.

“Sport has been through massive challenges because of the pandemic, floods, and bushfires over the past few years,” she says, “and it is because of the efforts of volunteers such as Andy that competitions have now resumed.”

Andy was an organiser of the Captain Christie Ocean swim for around five years from 2002 and is also serves, as he says with a wry grin, as ‘Chairman of Vice’ (Vice Chairman) of the Gerroa Community Association.