A 90-year-old farmer who has dedicated his life to the Nyngan community tells his family he's "not retired, just tired."
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Philip Gibson has "unexpectedly" received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his service to the community of Nyngan.
Most notably, the husband and father of four is well-known for his life-long involvement with the Nyngan Show Society, his sporting membership, his work with the Rural Fire Service and his commitment to a gentleman's agreement with Albert Priest.
Over the years Mr Gibson has patroned the Nyngan Show Society committee and held the position of vice-president and later served as president between 1988 and 1990.
More recently he had been made an honorary life member, and in 2018 received the Agricultural Shows Award for his substantial and selfless service to local community and committed support for agricultural shows.
"My mother and father were both involved in the Nyngan Show for years with sheep and mum in the flower and cooking department of the show," Mr Gibson said.
"For as long as I could remember I used to have to take flowers into the showground, and most of the sheep.
"Then the cattle started and I went right around the western shows with Poll Hereford Cattle and that's where it all began."
Mr Gibson recounted his most successful contributions to the show, the trailer stage used for the opening ceremony and his work shifting the grandstands around the grounds.
"I've got a lot of grandstands we got made, and it's my job to shift them around for the shearing competition, and back into the ring for the jumping," he said.
"I've got an old ute with a crane on the back, and I have to use that to shift these grandstands around the show. I think I'll have to leave the show my old ute with the crane on it, because it's very heavy to shift these grandstands around.
"They'll get one or two more years out of me, but I can't guarantee."
Since 1950 Mr Gibson had been a member of the Mullengudgery NSW Rural Fire Service brigade, and served as captain between 2003 and 2005.
"The bushfire brigade, I don't know how many fires I would have been to, but it's more than a hobby, it's a serious thing," he said.
He said one of his first experiences with fire safety came in 1944, at a time when he was in hospital after falling off a horse, when his family home had burnt down after an kerosene refrigerator had caught alight.
"Christmas eve mum and dad came in to visit me, word came that their homestead, 22 miles out of Nyngan was on fire.
"And at that period there were three other houses within that year that were burnt down with kerosene refrigerators."
Mr Gibson has also made a big contribution to sport in the shire with his involvement in the Nyngan Cricket Club, and as a member of the Tennis Club since 1964 also serving as president in 1990.
"I've played sport all my life, I could write a book on how many teeth I've had knocked out at cricket and so forth," he said.
However it's been his involvement as the former chair and committee member of the Albert Priest Channel Committee, which has been one of his most memorable involvements.
"Nyngan was always short of water, Mr Gibson said.
"Albert Priest was a local man and town clerk, and he came up with the idea that we could run a channel from Warren to Nyngan, because Nyngan was 60 feet lower than Warren," he said.
"You don't have to pump it out of the Macquarie, you've got drop boards in the creek that come out at Warren, and that water gravitates to Nyngan."
Mr Gibson said it's been his role over the years to hand down the gentlemen's agreement that had been made between Albert Priest and local farmers when the channel was established.
The agreement allowed the channel to run through local farms, without easement, in exchange for 60 mega litres of water for stock and domestic purposes.
"I was very involved and still am, because my father and two other old farmers from Mullengudery and nearby met Albert Priest on the channel when it was built and they agreed with a gentlemen's agreement," he said.
"Because they never took an easement out coming through our properties, they agreed that they could have a small amount of water for stock and domestic, 60 mega litres for every landowner the channel went though.
"It would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to take an easement out."
Mr Gibson's life-long service to the Nyngan began, he said "a long time ago".
"It turned out I was born on the road somewhere between 'Mulla', our parents home about 22 miles out of Nyngan, and the Six Mile on the Highway," he said.
"I do have a small lump on the back of my head, and I tell everyone, that's where I landed on the gravel road."