Rob and Penny Furner honoured for their community service

This morning I had the pleasure of presenting Penny and Rob Furner from Kilaben Bay with a Community Service Award.

For over a decade, the Furners have devoted a huge part of their lives towards the memorialisation of personnel based at RAAF Rathmines during WWII, and the iconic Catalina flying boat. In addition to maintaining the Catalina Flying Boat Memorial they were integral in formulating plans for a memorial museum to accommodate their collection of historic artefacts and the static display of a Catalina flying boat.

With a team of volunteers they travelled to Puerto Rico in 2013 to dismantle a Catalina that had been purchased, which they shipped back to Australia at significant personal expense, and is currently being restored.

Until recently, Penny and Rob were also involved in the organisation of the Rathmines Catalina Festival, the profits from which go towards the construction of the memorial museum. They each put in days of demanding physical labour leading up to, during and after the event, in addition to donating the use of their own equipment and machinery.