Local postie - Stephen Dwyer - was awarded a "Pride of Workmanship" award by the Rotary Club of Port Fairy at its meeting on 17th July 2023.
The award recognises Stephen's exceptional vocational service in delivering mail in Port Fairy and surrounds for many years. Pride of Workmanship awards have occasionally been bestowed on local identities by the Rotary Club but only around five have been awarded in the past twenty five years.
Stephen has served the Port Fairy community as our “postie” since December 2006 representing around 17 years of dedicated service, delivering mail to you through rain, hail, and shine. Before that, he had previously been the postmaster at the Port Fairy Post office – along with his mum, Kate Stuchbery and step dad, Don Stuchbery.
Steve's day usually starts around 5:30am when he sets off to the Warrnambool mail exchange to pick-up and sort the daily mail. When he returns to Port Fairy he services the local business, on foot, before then riding up to 62 Kms per day delivering letters and small parcels to local residents on his scooter. His day is long, as his round spans some 1500 properties, and it usually around 4:30 to 6:00pm before he is finished depending on load and weather. It can be quite a treacherous journey, especially in the wet, where the risk of the scooter slipping on wet grass is ever present. He delivers an average of 400 parcels a week, but during Covid times it was huge and there were days where he had up to 200 parcels to deliver.
The Rotary Club invited Stephen and his wife, Stacey, to the regular dinner meeting at the Star of the West Hotel and they were accompanied by their three children - Bailey, Aiden and Olive. With about 20 Rotarians and guests present, Rotarian, Harry Bracegirdle, spoke not only of Steve's exceptional vocational service but also his long association with the Port Fairy Pirates Cricket Club where he is a life member, a former captain/coach and and the current Club President.
Mainly a bowler, a highlight of Steve's cricketing career was taking over 600 wickets - including his time playing in Melbourne. His best haul was 7/29 but the most memorable was taking eight wickets and making 90 runs (his best total with the bat) when he won Man of the Match in a Grand Final - the first premiership for Port Fairy in 25 years. However, the most memorable highlight in his cricket career was when he came back from retirement in 2021 to be able to play in the same team with his boys in the lower grades. In 2022 he knew there may be a chance to play with his two sons, so he took that on and was incredibly happy when that did eventually happen.
Rotary Club President, Andrew Long, presented Steve with a plaque in recognition of his community service.
