A long-time volunteer at Yarra Glen’s Gulf Station Historic Farm has been recognised for his efforts at the 2025 Victorian Senior of the Year Awards.
Mike Ridley, from Montmorency, received a Council on the Ageing (COTA) Victoria Senior Achiever Awards which ‘recognises local community champions that significantly contribute to positive ageing in their community.’
Mr Ridley has volunteered at Gulf Station for 25 years, starting just before he retired from working at the ABC, having originally set out to be a volunteer tour guide like his father had in his retirement.
Mr Ridley said it was a great honour but he’s one of many people who have volunteered at the station and it’s an award for the team as far as he’s concerned.
“If we didn’t have volunteers, then Australia would probably implode… all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and all different types of work that people do as a volunteer really is quite astounding,” he said.
“I had been to Gulf Station on a visit a couple of times, and as a young boy on school holidays, I used to work on a farm and so I thought that’d be good to to turn in a full circle and come back to work on a farm.
“That was in the late 1990s…I’ve been doing work at Gulf Station ever since in various capacities.”
Originally owned and run by the Bell family from the 1850s to 1951, the National Trust acquired stewardship of Gulf Station in 1976 and restored its buildings and cottage garden.
Mr Ridley said a lot of National Trust properties couldn’t do without their volunteers.
“The number of volunteers at Gulf Station on a good day is about 16 or 17 people… it dwindled down to about two or three people for a very short period of time and then it was boosted again but the National Trust is obviously strapped for cash,” he said.
“It’s very difficult for them to be able to put on and open up places like Gulf Station seven days a week, they couldn’t do it without volunteers and the maintenance of the properties couldn’t be done without the volunteers.
“If it wasn’t for volunteers, the place just wouldn’t exist essentially.”
Mr Ridley has undertaken various tasks at Gulf Station throughout the years, acting as a tour guide, organising horse festivals, revegetating the heritage site and restoring and refurbishing the buildings and fences.
Mr Ridley said it gives him and all the other volunteers a great feeling of satisfaction to be able to preserve the buildings and the site in general.
“When we see them being used and visited by the general public, it gives us a great deal of satisfaction to see that what work is being done, we’re not just doing it for ourselves, we’re doing it so other people enjoy it and enjoy the history,” he said.
“Visitors are coming along and seeing how people lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s and so we enjoy giving school groups tours too when they come around.
“Some of them have never seen some farm animals before and so showing them and telling them about that is a great satisfaction to us all because it’s part of the education of young people.”
Mr Ridley was one of 10 recipients of the COTA Victoria Senior Achiever Awards.
Mr Ridley said before people retire, it would be a good idea if they thought about what they’re going to do once they retire.
“It is not only for planning your financial situation, it’s planning for your health and your wellbeing,” he said.
“Certainly, from my point of view, part of my wellbeing is to be able to go out to Gulf Station and do work for people that I enjoy doing, and that other people enjoy the product of.”
