Four decades of service to Manning Valley Meals on Wheels gives Diana a remarkable insight into the evolution of our community and its culture of volunteering. It is this contribution that is acknowledged with the Order of Australia Medal for service to the community of Taree. It is this contribution that provides her with the authority to give voice to the issue of caring for vulnerable people who live within our community.

Diana is one of more than 130 people in the Manning Valley who volunteer to support the Meals on Wheels service and she says her OAM is "as much about their contribution to our community as my own."

For Diana that contribution began as soon as she arrived in the Manning Valley with her husband, Dr Colin Rose, about 40 years ago.

"I came here as a city girl and I didn't really know anyone. I was very keen to become part of the community and make friends and when I look back on it, within about half-an-hour I was on the volunteers list for Meals on Wheels," she laughs.

"I've always enjoyed it and gradually over time, you join the committee, you become the treasurer and then the vice-president and president. I think I will be here until the day I need it!"

And therein lies a challenge. Diana says it is a little joke among volunteers that there will be no-one to provide the service to them in coming years.

"Our community culture has changed. Forty years ago everyone was on the Meals on Wheels roster, everyone was on the canteen roster and everyone did reading at school. Today so many people must work, there is no time or opportunity to give to groups that rely on volunteers," she explains.

"It has fallen back on an older group of the community to contribute their time."

Diana says she is one of the younger volunteers for Meals on Wheels, and at 68 years, that is "not so young". Her age and experience enables insight into the value of Meals on Wheels, and she says "it is so much more than the delivery of food".

"It's more than just a meal, you go in to their homes, you talk to the people and notice if things aren't right in their house or with their health. We have had people who have been collapsed on the floor when we have got there it stops some of the terrible stories that you see in the press where people have died and been dead for three months and nobody has even noticed. It is more than just a meal," she stresses.

"It's a conversation, you often have to cut up the meal, or take the lids off as some people don't have very good finger control. You put juice in the fridge, you put the soup somewhere they can get to it there's so many extra things we do. If there is anything wrong, well, when you are a regular volunteer you get to know the people fairly well and so you can tell if they are not well or coping in their home.

"Times are changing and there's talk about Coles and Woolworths and Bupa providing meals, but they are going to provide a frozen meal that's dropped off in an esky at the front door - they are not going to see if the person is okay. Meals on Wheels provides a very important service in our community."

Diana says that service involves "supplying four different cars in Taree a day, plus Old Bar, plus Wingham, plus food to Harrington and we have special meals that people in outlying areas come to collect from the office." 

She says our community needs to consider the value of volunteering and its contribution to wellbeing.

"I think everyone could do a bit more community work. I look around and some people are in everything and some people are in nothing - if everyone contributed it would transform lives in so many ways. 

"In the long term, loneliness and no social involvement is going to be a big problem. People engage so much on phones and these sort of things but I think people need need to focus more on the people in the community in which we live. Real connection.

"Human interaction is so important."