Awards 2018

Mr Paul Tolley - Batchelor

Nominated by Mrs Deborah Moyle - Batchelor 

Seconded by Paul McInerney

Paul has worked in the media industry over 25 years, in a myriad of roles including as a Presenter, Art Director, Production Designer, Production Manager, Locations Manager, Producer and Director.

Throughout his career, the scope of his expertise has been applied in community, commercial, political and academic environments in TV, Radio and press media.

Paul believes that to be able to live in any community is a privilege and his way of showing gratitude for living in Batchelor, is to voluntarily oversee and manage the Community's communications infrastructure, ensuring that it experiences minimal downtime. This includes being available on at 24/7 basis, maintaining or arranging for maintenance to be undertaken to keep all radio and TV stations on air: also inliaising with the technicians servicing the media that broadcast from Batchelor. That is all Darwin-based TV stations to ABC Radio stations and CAAMA Radio to the North Australian Outback.

Few people in the town of Batchelor, would be aware that Paul has unselfishly voluntarily committed his time and expertise over the last 5+ years to ensure that the residents of this township located approximately 100 km south of Darwin, remain constantly connected to the outside world the TV and radio networks. Without Paul's voluntary dedication, any transmission problem or fault could incur long time delays for service users while the technicians travel to Batchelor to rectify the issues. Obviously this is not an ideal situation and people with Paul's know-how is not common as his expertise is specialized and his contribution invaluable — especially when the TV or radio stops working in times of crisis such as cyclones, bushfires, etc.

bushfires etc.

For a number of years, Paul has also voluntarily adjudicated as one of the judges of the peak, national radio awards.

Further, the local community and a wider audience have benefited from Paul's presentation skills as the Master of Ceremonies at Anzac Day Commemoration Services both last year and this year respectively.