After 13 years in the top job, our affable and popular Lord Mayor, Gordon Bradbery AM, will hang up his mayoral robes next month, making way for new leadership for the city.
After the shame and embarrassment of our council's past, Gordon Bradbery was the right person for the job when he scored a massive win at the polls in 2011. Rebuilding some sort of respect and community confidence in city hall will probably be his greatest legacy. Let’s face it, he started from a very low base.
Having worked closely with Gordon for the past six years in a voluntary capacity on council’s Australia Day Committee, I’ve been able to get a pretty good appreciation of how he operates. Conciliatory. Measured. Consultative. Happy to take on board the ideas of others.
Of course, being top dog on a council where he doesn’t have majority support from the other elected councillors has required a great deal of patience, and with it no doubt considerable frustration. That being said, Gordon has rarely let it show, at least not publicly.
As you’d expect from a man of God, on his watch Gordon has championed our most in need. Another important legacy of his time in charge.
Having survived a serious health scare a few years back, and now well into his 70s, Gordon has decided to call time and pass the baton on to someone, almost certain to be younger. The bookies would probably have short odds on that being Labor’s Tania Brown, who, if elected, would create history to become Wollongong’s first woman Lord Mayor.
When Gordon leaves his 10th floor office in Burelli Street for the last time on Friday, August 16, he will have been the second-longest-serving Lord Mayor in our city’s history (only surpassed by Frank Arkell).
Previous Lord Mayors of note (Harry Graham, Jerry Kelly and Albert Squires) have had parks and roads named after them. I’d suggest, having helped in council’s recovery from those awful ICAC times, Gordon surely deserves some sort of lasting recognition.
I’ll put my idea out there and hopefully it generates lots of other worthy suggestions from Illawarra Flame readers.
A couple of years back, when Council was deliberating on how we should recognise our greatest ever Olympian, superstar Emma McKeon, our Lord Mayor put two suggestions to the community. One was to have the small lookout on Cliff Road overlooking Wollongong Harbour named after Emma. The other, which ultimately was the winner, was to have the new parkland adjacent to the North Wollongong Surf Club named in her honour (hopefully the long-awaited official opening can take place soon after Emma’s final Olympics later this month in Paris).
So, that leaves the Cliff Road lookout without a name. And given we have a lookout at City Beach named after Ted Tobin OAM, another high achiever from our council’s past, I believe it would be most appropriate that there’s a nice shiny plaque recognising the excellent civic service of Gordon Bradbery overlooking our harbour.
Wollongong local Tom Pastor “100 per cent supports” the suggestion. When visiting the lookout with a visitor from Vietnam last week, he was surprised it didn’t already have a name.
“No one would deserve an honour like this more than Gordon. He’s been so good for the city and gets very little recognition,” Tom said
I hope that’s started the ball rolling. We’d love to hear the views of other Illawarra Flame readers. How should we recognise the efforts and achievements of Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery?
Please get in touch to share your views.