Bernie Farquhar has taken out the Master Plumbers and Mechanical Services Association (MPA) Hygieia Award for his outstanding community services to the residents of Gippsland.
Hygieia is the Greek goddess of Health. As well as awarding plumbers for their work in the industry the award can also be awarded for community work.
“Bernie comes from a family of plumbers with firstly his father Maurice Farquhar starting the business in Bairnsdale in 1959 doing mostly general plumbing to villa work and also making rainwater tanks from corrugated iron with all soldered joints,” MPA historian Peter Jensen said.
“Bernie along with his brothers Peter and Kevin were apprenticed to their father, Peter (1969) and Kevin (1971) with Bernie later in (1983) as a mature aged apprentice and later took over the business.
“Later Bernie and Peter went their separate ways in their chosen specialised fields with their own successful plumbing business.
“Bernie’s company specialised in gasfitting and servicing which was combined with solar energy systems.
“Some of this work took him and still goes out onto the gas and oil rigs in Bass Strait where he and a team replaced the entire hot and cold water supplies on nine oil rigs and was greatly involved in the desalination plants and looking after the kitchen equipment on board.
“One of Bernie’s interesting and leading environmental projects was the bio-gas harnessing at the Bairnsdale Sewage Treatment Plant to run the gas turbine generators that could supply more than enough electricity to run the whole sewage treatment plant.”
Phil Kelly and Peter Jensen and a couple of others visited Bernie and his wife Sue one weekend and had a personalised tour of the plant.
As a leading local Bernie has contributed in many ways helping and supporting the people of Bairnsdale and surrounding areas of Gippsland.
Some of his achievements, which have been acknowledged by his community are:
– A local volunteer CFA fireman for many years, junior to seniors 1975 to 1998.
– Starting the local Rotary Club, Sunrise, and is a current member of Rotary Club of Mitchell River and past president of both clubs.
– Chair of the East Gippsland Air-Show.
– Lead the drive for the Giles Street bridge.
– A volunteer with Youth in Search, an organisation that takes youths on camps to help them on a path back to school, and how more help and support is needed for the rough sleepers that could be modelled on the Finnish model of “Home First”.
The December 2019 bushfires that ravished East Gippsland saw Bernie shine again in many capacities:
– He organised a list of needy people to each receive water/fire pumps, hastily rounded up and donated by the MPA and Bendigo MPA Golf Day charity group.
– He organised with Reece Bairnsdale, who very kindly donated large amounts of pipe and fittings to residents to help get them back on track.
– His company also took on the project from State Government to roll out 42 temporary homes to some of the most remote parts of East Gippsland and Corryong in the north east of the state. One, two and three bedroom portable homes were built in Melbourne and delivered to site where Bernie’s company was tasked to provide septic systems, gas, standalone solar, and connect power and water to each unit.
– Through Rotary he became a member of the East Gippsland Rotary Fire Aid Group who organised 150 shipping containers to be delivered to properties to provide temporary living and storage.
– He started the East Gippsland Timber Milling Project which was successful in acquiring both Federal and State government grants and donations from Rotary and Lions to purchase three portable timber mills to cut fallen timber from the fires and turn into fencing for stockyards and shedding. Some 2.5 million dollars of timber for free for farmers of East Gippsland.
