For the past 50 years, Margaret Campbell has been a dedicated Wyndham volunteer.
The Werribee great-grandmother, 81, has been presented with a Lalor Hero award in recognition of her five decades of service to the community.
Lalor MP Joanne Ryan presents the annual awards to recognise exceptional efforts by volunteers.
The list of organisations Mrs Campbell has been – or is – involved with includes Western Women Writers, Western Union Writers, the Wyndham Community Arts Alliance, the Werribee Community Legal Centre, the Werribee Red Cross and the Wyndham Reconciliation Advisory Committee.
Mrs Campbell has also been on the Wyndham Community and Education Centre board for 15 years.
She is serving as vice-president and volunteers there every Monday in her capacity as a justice of the peace. She describes the centre as “a community gem”.
“What it gives to community is truly wonderful – that’s why I like to hang around there,” she said.
Mrs Campbell, an author and poet, has written a history of the centre, which was previously called the Werribee Community Centre. For the project, she collected more than 160 stories from residents.
That, in turn, led to the publication of a book, From Here to There, that contains first-person accounts of family migration to Werribee from the 1840s-2000s that was launched by former prime minister Julia Gillard.
Mrs Campbell runs a weekly group for young writers in Werribee and launched a young writer’s competition in 1997.
“The reason I wanted to do it is because at school, when I handed a teacher my first poem, she said, ‘That’s nice,’ and handed it back,” Mrs Campbell said. “I was a closet writer for 53 years.”
Because her step-mother would not allow her to attend university, Mrs Campbell joined the WRAAF at the age of 18.
This brought her to Point Cook in 1954, and five years later she married her husband, Malcolm, with whom she had six children.
Mrs Campbell went on to study professional writing and editing as a mature-age student.
At the age of 78, she attained a master of arts from Victoria University.
