OAM is King

By Elizabeth Hart
A lifetime on the land and decades of service to the agricultural show movement has earned Noelene King the Medal of the Order of Australia.
Noelene is the fourth member of her pioneering Narre Warren North dairy farming family to receive an Australia Day Honours award.
Her grandfather George Rae was an MBE, and her father Jack Rae and his brother Bert had received the award of OAM.
“I feel humble and proud,” Noelene said yesterday.
The presentation will be at Government House in May.
Noelene grew up on the Rae family property at Narre Warren North and attended the primary school there and St Margaret’s school in Berwick.
As a child, she suffered severely from asthma. On one occasion during an attack she stopped breathing. A neighbour, Bob Street, gave her resuscitation, thus saving her life.
The asthma made her allergic to animals, but nothing would prevent her from working on farms.
With her father Jack she manages a South Gippsland dairy heifer grazing property at Almurta, which they bought together in 1985. There they run 250 animals.
With her husband Geoff she manages another farm at Loch, which the couple bought 13 years ago. There they run beef cattle, predominantly Charolais and Hereford.
Noelene’s first husband, Murray Forsythe, a member of Narre Warren CFA, died in the Ash Wednesday fires.
Noelene, 51, and Geoff had joined the Berwick Young Farmers Club at the age of 16.
“This gave me a strong grounding in meeting procedure, public speaking, debating, and interacting with people who had similar interests in the agricultural world,” she says.
She became adviser to the club, a Venturer group leader, a Cub leader.
She joined the committee of the Berwick Agricultural and Horticultural Society in 1983. The list of show society work is long: cattle chairman for 10 years, president in 1991, a life member in 1998 – following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather – councillor of the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria in 1995, chairman since 2002 of the beef cattle committee, membership of the Rural Ambassador Committee for six years, nominated representative of the Royal Agricultural Society to the Young Farmer Finance Council, membership of the committee of the Dandenong Agricultural and Pastoral Society, mentor to the youth committee, membership of the cattle committee, and member and past chairman of the Victorian Charolais Society and Central Victoria Hereford Group.
Each year Noelene volunteers to teach young people between the ages of eight and 12 how to wash, feed, brush and show cattle.
The young Noelene was employed immediately after school for a time with the Dandenong solicitor F.R. Minotti before travelling overseas. Her career as an office manager in Melbourne and at a Cheltenham printing firm ended with her retirement six years ago.
Noelene is a breast cancer survivor. As a member of the Berwick Show ball committee, she has seen the proceeds from the ball go to cancer research for the past two years.
Noelene and Geoff now live at Frankston South. Geoff is from a pioneering family of market gardeners.
“In all that I do in the agricultural sector I am supported by my husband Geoff. Together we work at the farms, exhibit cattle and support the agricultural show movement,” she said.
“To carry on the tradition of working in the community, which I admired my grandparents for, has been extremely fulfilling, and I will continue to embrace the encouragement and support of youth in agriculture as they are the rural sector’s contribution to our future.
“I will continue to enjoy my involvement in the agricultural show movement.”