After several months and thousands of votes, the six winners of the inaugural Mummys awards were announced via livestream on Saturday afternoon and Blayney's Penny Rohleder has won the Hero Of The Year category.
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Ms Rohleder has been taking photographs of still-born babies for Heartfelt, a volunteer organisation of professional photographers dedicated to giving the gift of photographic memories to families who have experienced stillbirth or have children with serious or life threatening illness.
Ms Rohleder said that she finds it hard to describe the feelings around winning the award.
"Photographing little bubs who don't make it, and kids that are terminally ill - no one hopes or wants to have to do that," she said. "I wish there was never a need for that. I am glad though, to be able to give people something that perhaps helps to comfort them."
As one of the smaller organisations that operate in Australia, Ms Rohleder hopes that the award helps bring recognition to them.
"I truly hope that this has at least brought about some recognition for Heartfelt, and the amazing work that we all do for so many families all around Australia."
The awards, which were open to all Central West residents (not just mums), and also saw three Orange finalists pick up wins.
Mum of the Year was won by Shona Millar; Business of the Year was taken out by Argyle Australian Saffron - owned by Angela and Brendon Argyle, while Libby Johnson won Angel of the Year.
Educator Of The Year was picked up by Cowra's Emma Tree and Elsie and Henry Mahon from Parkes won Garden Of The Year with 'Zephranthe'.
Central West Mums' founder and creator of the Mummys, Amorette Zielinski, was delighted with the community response to the inaugural awards and looked forward to making them a regular staple of Mumsfest - which had to be postponed from this month to March 2022 because of COVID.
"I launched the Central West Mummy Awards to publicly acknowledge the amazing resilient people and businesses that give practical help to families every day," she explained.
"Our Central West community has been through devastating drought, mouse plagues and COVID over the last few years, and this has an impact on our mental health and wellbeing, as well as on small businesses.
"I guess, for the first year [of the Mummy awards], I thought that I would just start with six categories that I feel... families connect with every day, [as well as] categories that [would recognise]... volunteers and frontline, support workers."
Tickets are on sale now through the Central West Mums' website for their next event, 'Mumsfest', which will be held on March 12 at the Greenhouse.