Oh sister, Casey scores a hat-trick

By Jim Mynard
RIVER Gum Ward councillor Wayne Smith brought three trophies home to the City of Casey, presented at the Sister Cities Australia national conference in Darwin, during October.
Casey won three awards in the national competition, ‘Community Involvement’, ‘Assistance to a Sister City’, and ‘Sports’.
Two trophies are presented for each award, one for the winning entry and one to the corresponding sister city.
Cr Smith presented the sports award trophy to Co-chairman of the Edwin Flack Games Kay Vrieze, and the community involvement trophy to Friends of Ermera president Jan Tresize during the Casey Council meeting on Thursday 1 November.
Cr Smith was a Casey delegate and a presenter at the conference.
Ms Tresize said the partner’s trophy would be taken to Ermera when the next friends delegation visited East Timor.
She said Casey’s trophy would be given pride of place.
Ms Vrieze said the Edwin Flack Games had developed a fantastic partnership between Casey Council and the community.
“The council is a major supporter of the Edwin Flack Games and the reciprocal games with the James Connolly Games in Springfield, America.”
Cr Smith said he was billed to speak for 40 minutes at the conference, but was asked to cut this to four minutes because the East Timor Deputy Prime Minister Dr Jose Luis Guterres had accepted a late invitation to attend the conference and speak.
“However, Dr Guterres said he was not there to take over the conference and deferred back to us.
He said it was appreciated that Australian local government was doing much to help East Timor.”
He said also that every city needs a Jan Tresize who has been the driver for the Friends of Ermera.
“We are proud of Casey’s involvement with East Timor, but it has been because of the friends group that we have achieved this,” he said.