Franc Tehovnik
NSW Slovenian Australian Awards 2008
Outstanding Volunteer of the Year
Presented on 21 June 2009

Franc was born in Rakovnik near Ljubljana in a family of 7 children. At 24 years of age he decided to leave home for Australia in search of his fortune.  He arrived in Sydney in 1958 on the ship Flamminia and settled in the Wollongong area.

He felt lucky as his sister had been in Australia since 1948 and by the time he was settled, there were four siblings and his mum in Australia.  Within two years his mum decided to relocate back to her beloved Slovenija.

He had come to find his fortune and immediately searched for work. Firstly he found work within the steelworks of Port Kembla, and not long after he joined the Snowy Mountains project, where he worked for five and a half years.

In 1964 he returned to Wollongong and later married Lefta. They established their home in Dapto with two sons Erik and Paul and a daughter Tanja.

For the last 30 years Franc and his family have been deeply involved with the Slovenian Club Planica in Wollongong. He has been a committee member for more than 10 years now and he is counted on as a very reliable member of the committee. Whether anything needs to be fixed or done, it only needs to be mentioned and Franc is on the job.  He is well known as being a man of many talents, not only mechanically minded, and a general handyman, but also a cook for visiting priests when he is on roster.

FRANC TEHOVNIK je zelo cenjen v Slovenski skupnosti v Wollongongu in res priznanja vreden, ne samo letos ampak že desetletja.  Je človek, ki se loti vsakega dela, pa naj bo to popraviti kosilnico, počistiti in okrasiti cerkev ali klubske prostore, očistiti dvorišče, ali pa zamenjati žlebove na strehi. Poleg tega pa še kuha za duhovnike kadar je on na vrsti.

Čestitamo!

 

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