Gerard’s a Ute Muster champion

But Gerard always thought he could do more, and from 2012 started volunteering outside of work hours too.

These days, Gerard takes two weeks leave from Edward River Council - and his wife takes time of from her nursing job at Deni Hospital - to offer their services to the Ute Muster team.

Since 2014 Gerard has been in charge of the scrim that can be found all over the Muster site - the gauze-like fabric acts as a barrier and promotes the event’s sponsors.

For his dedication, Gerard was surprised with a Muster Champion award during last Friday’s chairman’s reception.

“I thought our invitation was just a one-off, as a bit of thank you for Pam and I - because we also volunteer in other ways.

“It was a bit of a surprise, because I didn’t even know the award existed.”

While the award was presented to Gerard, he says he does not do the massive scrim job on his own.

He was asked to put together his own crew of volunteers to help with the task.

Helping him has been his own family, as well as Angela and Andrew Brain and family and the Simpson/Hislop family from Finley.

Gerard’s not exactly sure how much scrim they put up each year, but he said it would be at least 4km worth.

And in presenting his award last week, Ute Muster general manager Vicky Lowry highlighted that Gerard and his team go above and beyond by cleaning, ironing and folding the scrim up again post event.

“A couple of times it got a bit dirty, we’d clean it up,” Gerard explained.

“There’s about 15 people on the team, although some years there’s less than 10 of us.

“I was initially helping Pip out, and he said if I could pull my own team together he’d leave the scrim with me.”