But not on Australia Day!

Celebrations in Junee started at the crack of dawn with runners and riders making the 3.2km run from the jail to the Junee Recreation and Aquatic Centre. 

Angus McKelvie-Hill, 16, from Marrar was the first man across the line and Elise Drum, 18, from Junee took out the open women’s section of the annual Jail Break Fun Run. 

After a quick dip and tunes from the Junee Town Band the official ceremony got underway. 

You couldn’t wipe the smiles off the Junee Scouts faces when Jackie Starr’s name was called out as the winner of the town’s Citizen of the Year. 

“She’s got the star name and now she really is a star!” almost 11-year-old Cub Scout Zac McDonald said.

Jackie has been involved with Scouts in Junee for 30 years, and 18 years before that when she lived in Sydney. 

“When I look up at those young people raising the flag, it just makes me so proud to be a part of this community,” she said. 

Zyon Shepherd won Junior Citizen of the Year for lending his media and digital skills to a wide range of causes and the much loved Junee Community Transport Volunteer Drivers won Volunteer Team of the Year. 

Norma Higginson celebrated her 64^th Australia Day after immigrating from Northern Ireland in 1954.

Raised on the farm, she’s been in Junee ever since, turning 90 recently.

“At home we used to look up at the sky and wonder if it would ever stop raining, here we look up and wonder if it will ever start!” she said.

Norma is “all for Aus” and almost as proud a royalist as she is a proud great grandmother of 3-year-old colouring in competition winner Annabel Higginson.

LIVE RIVERINA BLOG