Hazel Whitmore, of Whitmore Buslines has been awarded the 2021 Trish Pickering Memorial Award – awarded to a female in the transport industry who has contributed over a prolonged period of time and has been dedicated to the improvement of the industry.
Transport Women Australia Limited (TWAL) and Daimler Truck and Bus Australia Pacific have announced the winners of the 2021 Driving the Difference scholarships.
I was not going to do another column about Covid and all its implications, however, I am sure everyone is feeling the same effects of lethargy and depression and is so over the snap seven-day lockdown which is now into 60-plus days in Victoria, as I am.
So much can happen in two weeks: the Transport Women Australia Limited, Wodonga TAFE, Volvo Group Australia initiative – Women Driving Transport Careers has been named a finalist in the Victorian Training Awards – Industry Collaboration Award category, with the winner to be announced on October 16.
The year is half over, and we are still enduring lockdowns, businesses are being forced to close with little warning and reopen with restrictions, so many of them not reopening at all.
In the past few weeks I have been able to fly to Sydney to present about ‘Women Breaking Glass Ceilings in Transport Operations’, then go home to central western NSW to visit family and manage to fit in a meeting with the remarkable Sally Tipping of Dubbo.
Isn’t it sad that we think we have things so bad, when we have all the essentials of life like food, clothing and shelter, and most of us have a job to go to even if we don’t love it?
It’s nearly the end of January and the start of the New Year has been much better than 2020, we have not been under siege by horrendous bushfires and crippling drought, although we are still in recovery mode from Covid-19.
I am starting this year off with new words; we need to stop calling trucking a male dominated industry because while it is predominantly male, the men do not dominate the women who are succeeding in the industry.
Amazing as it may seem, we have much to celebrate as 2020 draws to a close. We are still standing, a little battered and beaten and sadly in some cases without members of our families. However, in the majority, the resilience of the trucking industry has kept the country moving and supplied with all the essentials of life through the most chaotic year most of us will ever experience in our lifetime.