Last night, Mayor Ned Mannoun revealed the thinking behind holding the Heroes of Liverpool function at Casula Powerhouse. Before handing out the plaques, he told the high achievers that when the Queen’s Birthday honours list was released there was some surprise there were so few people from Liverpool in it.
“So we did a bit of digging, went through the list and found that there were a lot more people honoured who worked here. Some in our hospital and others at the Ingham Institute. And that’s when it was decided to hold a function in their honour,’’ Mr Mannoun told the gathering.
A few people could not attend last night’s shindig, including the former state minister and Liverpool mayor, Craig Knowles, but quite a few did, including Melinda Cruz of Miracle Babies and others.
♦ Restaurants come and go but some just keep on keeping on. Like Tony Chan’s Tea House Chinese Restaurant, located next door to Minto Inn and opposite Minto rail station where for 31 years it has been serving great food to people who just keep coming back. Our family were lucky enough to discover it a few months after it opened in 1984 and we have been going there ever since – for lunch, dinner, 21st birthday parties, 60ths, whatever.
Owner Tony Chan is a humble man and declined to tell us what the secret to his success, but we think we know why: food is always great, it’s not too expensive and the service is second to none in every way. Here’s a toast to the next 30 years of Chan’s Tea House Chinese Restaurant!
♦ Speaking of local legends, just a few doors down from this wonderful Chinese restaurant was another humble man, Ron Moore, who ran Minto Hardware for 30 years. Campbelltown Council, having been approached by his family, have agreed to rename Minto Community One Hall to the Ron Moore Community Centre. Ron Moore passed away in 2008, aged 82. In 1993, Mr Moore was named Campbelltown Citizen of the Year and in 1994 was received the Order of Australia Medal. I served on the Campbelltown Australia Day committee with Ron for the next few years and got to know him pretty well.
He first opened his hardware business in 1956 in Queen Street, before relocating in 1960 to Ingleburn. In 1977 he moved the store to Minto where it operated for another 30 years. In 2012 Mr Moore was inducted into the Hardware Legends Hall of Fame in recognition of his 56 years contribution to the industry.
♦ The two most controversial proposals in Liverpool are both east of the Georges River, the intermodal at Moorebank and the concrete recycling plant near Georges Fair. And now the opposition to them has sort of doubled almost overnight, because the two separate groups fighting them, RAID (Residents Against Intermodal Development) and MRAG (Moorebank residents Action Group) have agreed to support each other in any way they can as they wage their separate campaigns against each of the despised proposals. RAID’s John Anderson told me that he and MRAG leader, Fiona Macnaught, had a chat about this and agreed to an informal mutual support pact. Makes good sense, really.
♦ We popped down to Minto Soccer Club’s grounds to watch a relative play last weekend but we managed to bump into not one but two Campbelltown councillors on our way to the playing fields.
Driving in we passed Councillor Darcy Lound driving out, who gave us a friendly wave, as he always does.
Then outside the canteen and change rooms we bumped into Councillor George Brticevic, wearing a national team jumper, not sure if it was a Wallabies or a Socceroos one. They do look alike those two. And it was early in the morning on a Sunday.
