September 2, 2025 • 14 mins
Nominations are open for Blind Australian of the Year, Young Blind Australian of the year and Blind Australian of the Year Employer. Peter Greco hears from Karan Nagrani, Marketing Manager with Link Vision about this years awards and how to make a nomination.
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S1 (00:13):
Well, the blonde Australian of the year is on again
this year. Nominations have opened. Let's find out a bit
more about it. Let's find out a lot more about
it from the emcee of the night last year, and
also butting up again this year. And the marketing manager
for Link Vision, Karen Grundy. Great to catch up. Thanks
to Tom and welcome.
S2 (00:32):
Thank you so much. What an honour to be interviewed
by the OG Blind Man of the year.
S1 (00:37):
Oh stop it, stop it!
S2 (00:38):
No no no. Come on. I think you must let
people know you're doing the original.
S1 (00:43):
Yes, the original. But it got better after me. That's
the good news.
S2 (00:47):
No, it's a saying. You're the original and always will
be like a classic. You'll never go out of style.
S1 (00:52):
Alright, that's very kind. I'm not sure about that. You see,
the clothes I wear, I will blind.
S2 (00:57):
You can get away with that.
S1 (00:58):
That's right. That's my excuse. Anyway, you know all the
lines I do. Come on. You've been with the awards?
Been going for a little while, which is great. You've
introduced a new category. Maybe we can start there for
this year.
S2 (01:11):
Yeah, well, uh, it only made sense for this to happen.
It was quite an organic decision that this year, for
the first time, there's going to be a Blind trainer
of the year youth award just for people who are, well, kids.
I wouldn't say kids, young adults from 15 to 21.
S1 (01:28):
Fantastic.
S2 (01:28):
Just because the, you know, the quality of are nominated
is so high, it gets so hard to put everyone
under one category. So it just made sense.
S1 (01:38):
And I've just had a thought maybe this year's winner
might be the future blind Australian of the year in
the future, so they could get two awards.
S2 (01:45):
Who knows? Hey, there you go. History in the making.
S1 (01:49):
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, what about the criteria? Let's talk about
the criteria for the young blind Australian of the year.
Is it similar to the to the other one?
S2 (01:57):
It's exactly the same, except the age difference. So you've
got to be between 15 and 21. Obviously have a
legal form of blindness. And it's just anyone who's breaking barriers,
you know, it doesn't need to be sport. It doesn't
need to be music. It could just be something this
kid is excelling at or young adult. I keep saying, kid,
I'm showing my age now. I'm going to turn 40
(02:18):
next year. So I'm getting quite kind of get used
to calling other people kids because I'm going to hit
middle age next year. Uh, but yeah, it's exactly the same.
It's just celebrating high achieving, blind Australians. As simple as that.
S1 (02:30):
Now, who could nominate for either category or in fact,
you got a third category which you touch on that
as well.
S2 (02:35):
Yeah. Well the original categories have been, you know, the
individual and the employer of choice, but they remain. And
then this year the state government Queensland is uh sponsoring
the award, which is fantastic to see. You know, the
government get behind such a lovely cause and uh, yeah.
So there's three awards. All in all, that's fantastic.
S1 (02:56):
And I know I probably say this every year in
a sense you can't say enough, but that employer of
choice is so important because, you know, it's it's so
tough for people who are blind or low vision to
get employment. Uh, you know, they want to work and
it's just a matter of being given that opportunity. So
this is a great way to kind of shine a
light on that part of it as well.
S2 (03:13):
Absolutely. You know, speaking personally as an advocate, I find
it quite frustrating where people will pass comments. You know,
they'll look at a blind person and be like, oh,
here's another bum living off my tax money, go get
a job. But then when we apply for a job,
no one gives us the job. Like make up your mind,
you know?
S1 (03:30):
Yeah.
S2 (03:31):
It's important to have a category like employer of choice,
because I feel like not only does it acknowledge and recognize, uh,
how kind some organizations are and how broad minded they are. And,
you know, in terms of and I'm not just talking
blind organizations, I'm not talking your guide dog in Australia.
I'm talking organizations in general. Like, it's so nice to
(03:52):
see organizations that have never come across a blind person
employ someone who's blind, because usually, I mean, it's not
a competition, but a lot of companies just think, oh,
we've got a ramp. If someone can come on a
wheelchair that's sorted, we've got the the diversity pick done.
It doesn't work like that. It's not a one size
fits all. So it's really, really nice to see organizations
(04:13):
that are, you know, employing people like us be recognized
in such a beautiful manner.
S1 (04:18):
It's a great point. And of course, you know, they
pay taxes or we pay taxes. And then that goes
back into the community and everyone wins. If more employers
could be more thinking of that mindset, that would be great.
S2 (04:30):
Absolutely.
S1 (04:31):
100% accurate. How can people nominate and how do you
go about doing it? Or who could nominate and how
do you go about doing it?
S2 (04:36):
Well anyone can nominate. So Peter no you can't. You've
already won. Sorry. You can't.
S1 (04:41):
Okay I can nominate someone like I can't nominate myself,
but I could someone that's.
S2 (04:46):
But you can nominate yourself in general. Uh, you know,
the the only thing. So this is, uh, I think Terry,
who's the CEO of the organization, was saying this is
the first year that nominations have come in from every state,
and nominations are literally flooding in, like, oh, brilliant. It's
reached a stage where, you know, the, the, the Terry's like,
(05:06):
oh my God, there's more, there's more. This is fantastic.
But it's going to be such a hard decision. So
nominations are closing soon. But I'd say if you want
to nominate someone, whether it's yourself or someone you know,
do it ASAP. And honestly, it's not a popularity contest.
It's not how many nominations you get. You could get
one nomination with a fantastic testimonial and that's that'll do
(05:30):
the trick.
S1 (05:31):
Perfect. Now, um, open for anyone to nominate as long
as the person is an Australian, I assume.
S2 (05:37):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Australian. You know, with the
legal form of blindness and just someone who's excelling and
that excelling is subjective. It doesn't necessarily mean this is
a genius chess champion or like a, you know, gold Paralympian.
It just as long as you're excelling in something or
just breaking boundaries.
S1 (05:58):
That's a great thing to say, because sometimes, you know,
the superhero gets recognised and not the person that does.
What the heck? If I could put it that way.
S2 (06:06):
It's definitely not like that. And you know, if you
look at some of the people that have won in
the past, they're not superheroes. And I mean this with
a lot of love. They're like regular people that are
just doing really fun, exciting things that just make people go, wow,
I wish I could do that.
S1 (06:19):
Yeah, or maybe I will do that one day if
you're a younger person.
S2 (06:23):
That's true. That's true. But yeah. Nominations close on the
19th of September. So if you want to nominate someone
or yourself, do it ASAP. But like I said, there's
been like a flood of nominations and really high quality ones.
So I highly recommend really putting a lot of love
into that nomination so it stands out to win.
S1 (06:41):
It is a great thing to be at the announcement
of the winner would be a great thing as well.
You've made quite a night of the occasion, haven't you?
Now the announcement.
S2 (06:49):
Oh yeah, there's three months to give. Now we're gonna
have such a fun night because once again, well, I
refer to us as Three Blind Mice, which is not
really politically correct, but, uh, so we've got Reggie from
Big Brother. We've got Rachel and myself, Rachael Leahcar, uh,
Reggie Bird, myself. The three of us are back again
(07:09):
as the talent lineup, so we'll have Reggie welcoming everyone
on the red carpet. Rachel will be singing beautifully as
she does, and I'm going to be the emcee. And
I just want to say, if my jokes offended you
last year. Please work on yourself because I'm going to
do it all over again this year.
S1 (07:27):
Fair enough. I'll go have some therapy and come back
and buy us another round.
S2 (07:32):
Maybe an exorcism. Peter?
S1 (07:33):
Another course? Yeah, it sounds like fun. I was great
to get people like Reggie and Rachel involved. I mean,
Rachel is such a talented artist, you know, has done
so many great things sort of publicly for people blind
or low vision with her appearances on The Voice and
other things and and Reggie similarly. So.
S3 (07:49):
Well, Reggie is just out.
S2 (07:51):
Of the I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Uh, jungle.
And it's so funny because Reggie and I raised with
Reggie and I be friends. And we caught up this morning,
Reggie and I, and we were talking about this and
how excited we are to reunite on the 11th again.
But yeah, it's just, you know, it's such a beautiful feeling.
I mean, obviously the night is so special, but just
(08:11):
seeing so many like blind people together and, you know,
advocates and singers and reality TV stars, I think so
many of us come together in one room. You can
really just like look around and well, obviously blind people
can't do anything. You can't become a pilot or like
a brain surgeon, but you sort of look around and
you see people excelling in different fields and you're like, yeah,
(08:31):
you could do a lot of things, you know.
S1 (08:33):
Never say never to pilot or surgery. Karen.
S2 (08:36):
Well, if there's a plane that's flying itself, I'm definitely
not going on that.
S1 (08:41):
Okay. Well, I think it could be the same with
cars in the future, but we'll put that to one
side now. Um, people can attend the event even if
you're not nominated or if you haven't nominated, you can
just attend the event. Have a good night.
S2 (08:53):
Absolutely. Look, it's going to be a night of blind excellence.
It's going to be all the the talent lineup are blind.
Like I said myself as the MC, Reggie is a
red carpet host. Rachel is singing. There's going to be
delicious food, free flowing drinks, live music, entertainment. Obviously you're
going to be there as history is made. When we
have the three Blind Men of the year awards handed
(09:14):
out and networking as well. And this time there's going
to be a trade expo right before. And if you
get your tickets, you get to attend the expo as well. And,
you know, tickets start from $75 if you have a
disability and your companion. So it's really it's affordable and
it's a night you won't forget. It's really I'm not
(09:35):
just saying this because I'm the MC. I'm not just
saying this because I'm saying this because I was there
last year. And just going by the feedback, the old
guard that night was just magic. Honestly, it was magic.
S1 (09:46):
Where is it held?
S2 (09:46):
Where it's being held at the at the Amara Hotel
in Brisbane.
S1 (09:50):
And the date again.
S2 (09:51):
The Saturday the 11th of October. The red carpet starts
with Reggie at 630. Doors open at seven and then
the night begins.
S1 (10:00):
All right, just a bit more about what happens beforehand.
That's obviously a very important thing as well, I guess
just to give people a bit of an idea of
what's going on in that sort of space as well.
S2 (10:09):
Uh, you mean before? Before 630? Yeah, yeah. So we're
going to have, like a mini trade expo. There'll be
some stalls there. You guys are going to be there
as well.
S1 (10:18):
Australia. Yeah.
S2 (10:19):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so there'll be some stores. You
can come and check it out from that it opens
to the red carpet where you get to meet Reggie,
take photos with her. She did that last year as well.
She's the absolute right. You love, love getting to know
her in person. And then doors open at seven. Then
you know we are. I guess I'll get up on
stage and I'll start the thing. And then we have
(10:41):
the awards with a little break in the middle. And
then we're going to have performances. And every time there's
a break, you have a chance to network with other people,
which was actually a really big thing last year. I
didn't expect that much networking. You know, I didn't expect
blind people to be so keen to network with one another.
But that really was the case. In fact, one of
(11:02):
the requests we got was, can we have more time
to network this year?
S1 (11:06):
Haha, yeah, well of course there's so many email lists
and discussion groups through social media etc. which are all
fine and good. But you know when you get to
meet someone face to face, regardless of whether you can
physically see them or not, but when you can speak
to them face to face, it's a whole different, uh,
sort of emphasis on the relationship.
S2 (11:23):
Yeah. And I think because Reggie, Rachel and I, we
do different things, like, uh, we get, you know, we
get approached and we get asked different things, like Reggie
will get asked about her time on reality TV and
what it felt like. You know, Rachael gets asked about her,
her singing experience. I get asked about being an advocate,
you know, because I've done a lot of work with
the media. Like I get asked how I got into it,
that sort of stuff. So it's a lot of community building,
(11:46):
and it's really lovely to share that experience with other
blind people, because there are some young people there that
are actually looking for guidance, and I think it's a
fantastic way to actually lead by example and learn from
someone's lived experience. When you're living with a form of
blindness yourself.
S1 (12:02):
It's a very worthwhile thing and certainly worth supporting. And
it's great that the Queensland Government's got on board. Congratulations
on that. Because governments aren't easy to win over Karen.
S2 (12:10):
So no, not at all.
S1 (12:12):
No, that deal has done a good job.
S2 (12:14):
Oh well I can't take the credit for that. That
goes to Terry. He works really, really hard. And he
he's a superstar Terry. He's such a lovely man and
he's he's making this all happen.
S1 (12:25):
But also on a serious note, I'm being serious here.
But that gives the, uh, the award a bit more
credence and gravitas in a sense, you know, to have
some government support as well. It's, uh, you know, it
just gives a bit more oomph.
S4 (12:36):
I mean, you can say oomph. I feel like it.
It gives you.
S2 (12:39):
A sense of, uh, reassurance that we are being listened
to by these big organizations. I think it's definitely reassuring
and comforting to know that the government, you know, is
not just taking a photograph for an annual report, like
they're actually getting involved, actually doing things, you know. Yeah.
(12:59):
So it's really nice to see that. Yeah.
S1 (13:01):
Very, very well said now. Okay. So where do we
go to uh, online is the best way to nominate.
S4 (13:07):
Absolutely.
S2 (13:08):
Go to Blind Train of the year.com. Uh, and it's
pretty straightforward. It's a blind friendly website. You've got the
nomination tab and the gala tickets tab. You can also
book tables of ten. Um, now the the only thing
I will say is the last, uh, the tickets sold out.
And because there were a lot of people saying they
(13:29):
wanted more tickets. We added more tables to make room
for them. But this year, because of accessibility reasons, we're
not going to be doing that. So like when it
sells out, it sells out. It's. Yeah. And I think
I think after tickets have sold anyway. Fantastic. So there's
not there's you know like considering the awards now less
than three months away, uh, the gala I would say
(13:51):
get your tickets. This is not just a drill like
we will sell out.
S1 (13:54):
Yep. Well, you deserve to. We'll put the details up
with our show notes as far as how people can
book goes. Karen, great to catch up. Hopefully next week
or two, we'll catch up with, uh, Rachel and or
Reggie as well to get their point of view of
how they're going. And maybe we can get them to
do a critique on your emceeing last year as well.
S2 (14:10):
We should do it. I was going to say you
should get all three of us, and we can have
a glass of gin and laugh.
S1 (14:15):
Yeah, great to catch up. Uh. Good luck.
S2 (14:18):
Thanks, Peter. Thank you for having me.
S1 (14:20):
That's the grantee there. He was the emcee. He is
the emcee at the Blind Australian of the year. All
those details up on our show notes. Nominate now. Announcement
October the 11th. Put that in your diary.
Well, the blonde Australian of the year is on again
this year. Nominations have opened. Let's find out a bit
more about it. Let's find out a lot more about
it from the emcee of the night last year, and
also butting up again this year. And the marketing manager
for Link Vision, Karen Grundy. Great to catch up. Thanks
to Tom and welcome.
S2 (00:32):
Thank you so much. What an honour to be interviewed
by the OG Blind Man of the year.
S1 (00:37):
Oh stop it, stop it!
S2 (00:38):
No no no. Come on. I think you must let
people know you're doing the original.
S1 (00:43):
Yes, the original. But it got better after me. That's
the good news.
S2 (00:47):
No, it's a saying. You're the original and always will
be like a classic. You'll never go out of style.
S1 (00:52):
Alright, that's very kind. I'm not sure about that. You see,
the clothes I wear, I will blind.
S2 (00:57):
You can get away with that.
S1 (00:58):
That's right. That's my excuse. Anyway, you know all the
lines I do. Come on. You've been with the awards?
Been going for a little while, which is great. You've
introduced a new category. Maybe we can start there for
this year.
S2 (01:11):
Yeah, well, uh, it only made sense for this to happen.
It was quite an organic decision that this year, for
the first time, there's going to be a Blind trainer
of the year youth award just for people who are, well, kids.
I wouldn't say kids, young adults from 15 to 21.
S1 (01:28):
Fantastic.
S2 (01:28):
Just because the, you know, the quality of are nominated
is so high, it gets so hard to put everyone
under one category. So it just made sense.
S1 (01:38):
And I've just had a thought maybe this year's winner
might be the future blind Australian of the year in
the future, so they could get two awards.
S2 (01:45):
Who knows? Hey, there you go. History in the making.
S1 (01:49):
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, what about the criteria? Let's talk about
the criteria for the young blind Australian of the year.
Is it similar to the to the other one?
S2 (01:57):
It's exactly the same, except the age difference. So you've
got to be between 15 and 21. Obviously have a
legal form of blindness. And it's just anyone who's breaking barriers,
you know, it doesn't need to be sport. It doesn't
need to be music. It could just be something this
kid is excelling at or young adult. I keep saying, kid,
I'm showing my age now. I'm going to turn 40
(02:18):
next year. So I'm getting quite kind of get used
to calling other people kids because I'm going to hit
middle age next year. Uh, but yeah, it's exactly the same.
It's just celebrating high achieving, blind Australians. As simple as that.
S1 (02:30):
Now, who could nominate for either category or in fact,
you got a third category which you touch on that
as well.
S2 (02:35):
Yeah. Well the original categories have been, you know, the
individual and the employer of choice, but they remain. And
then this year the state government Queensland is uh sponsoring
the award, which is fantastic to see. You know, the
government get behind such a lovely cause and uh, yeah.
So there's three awards. All in all, that's fantastic.
S1 (02:56):
And I know I probably say this every year in
a sense you can't say enough, but that employer of
choice is so important because, you know, it's it's so
tough for people who are blind or low vision to
get employment. Uh, you know, they want to work and
it's just a matter of being given that opportunity. So
this is a great way to kind of shine a
light on that part of it as well.
S2 (03:13):
Absolutely. You know, speaking personally as an advocate, I find
it quite frustrating where people will pass comments. You know,
they'll look at a blind person and be like, oh,
here's another bum living off my tax money, go get
a job. But then when we apply for a job,
no one gives us the job. Like make up your mind,
you know?
S1 (03:30):
Yeah.
S2 (03:31):
It's important to have a category like employer of choice,
because I feel like not only does it acknowledge and recognize, uh,
how kind some organizations are and how broad minded they are. And,
you know, in terms of and I'm not just talking
blind organizations, I'm not talking your guide dog in Australia.
I'm talking organizations in general. Like, it's so nice to
(03:52):
see organizations that have never come across a blind person
employ someone who's blind, because usually, I mean, it's not
a competition, but a lot of companies just think, oh,
we've got a ramp. If someone can come on a
wheelchair that's sorted, we've got the the diversity pick done.
It doesn't work like that. It's not a one size
fits all. So it's really, really nice to see organizations
(04:13):
that are, you know, employing people like us be recognized
in such a beautiful manner.
S1 (04:18):
It's a great point. And of course, you know, they
pay taxes or we pay taxes. And then that goes
back into the community and everyone wins. If more employers
could be more thinking of that mindset, that would be great.
S2 (04:30):
Absolutely.
S1 (04:31):
100% accurate. How can people nominate and how do you
go about doing it? Or who could nominate and how
do you go about doing it?
S2 (04:36):
Well anyone can nominate. So Peter no you can't. You've
already won. Sorry. You can't.
S1 (04:41):
Okay I can nominate someone like I can't nominate myself,
but I could someone that's.
S2 (04:46):
But you can nominate yourself in general. Uh, you know,
the the only thing. So this is, uh, I think Terry,
who's the CEO of the organization, was saying this is
the first year that nominations have come in from every state,
and nominations are literally flooding in, like, oh, brilliant. It's
reached a stage where, you know, the, the, the Terry's like,
(05:06):
oh my God, there's more, there's more. This is fantastic.
But it's going to be such a hard decision. So
nominations are closing soon. But I'd say if you want
to nominate someone, whether it's yourself or someone you know,
do it ASAP. And honestly, it's not a popularity contest.
It's not how many nominations you get. You could get
one nomination with a fantastic testimonial and that's that'll do
(05:30):
the trick.
S1 (05:31):
Perfect. Now, um, open for anyone to nominate as long
as the person is an Australian, I assume.
S2 (05:37):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Australian. You know, with the
legal form of blindness and just someone who's excelling and
that excelling is subjective. It doesn't necessarily mean this is
a genius chess champion or like a, you know, gold Paralympian.
It just as long as you're excelling in something or
just breaking boundaries.
S1 (05:58):
That's a great thing to say, because sometimes, you know,
the superhero gets recognised and not the person that does.
What the heck? If I could put it that way.
S2 (06:06):
It's definitely not like that. And you know, if you
look at some of the people that have won in
the past, they're not superheroes. And I mean this with
a lot of love. They're like regular people that are
just doing really fun, exciting things that just make people go, wow,
I wish I could do that.
S1 (06:19):
Yeah, or maybe I will do that one day if
you're a younger person.
S2 (06:23):
That's true. That's true. But yeah. Nominations close on the
19th of September. So if you want to nominate someone
or yourself, do it ASAP. But like I said, there's
been like a flood of nominations and really high quality ones.
So I highly recommend really putting a lot of love
into that nomination so it stands out to win.
S1 (06:41):
It is a great thing to be at the announcement
of the winner would be a great thing as well.
You've made quite a night of the occasion, haven't you?
Now the announcement.
S2 (06:49):
Oh yeah, there's three months to give. Now we're gonna
have such a fun night because once again, well, I
refer to us as Three Blind Mice, which is not
really politically correct, but, uh, so we've got Reggie from
Big Brother. We've got Rachel and myself, Rachael Leahcar, uh,
Reggie Bird, myself. The three of us are back again
(07:09):
as the talent lineup, so we'll have Reggie welcoming everyone
on the red carpet. Rachel will be singing beautifully as
she does, and I'm going to be the emcee. And
I just want to say, if my jokes offended you
last year. Please work on yourself because I'm going to
do it all over again this year.
S1 (07:27):
Fair enough. I'll go have some therapy and come back
and buy us another round.
S2 (07:32):
Maybe an exorcism. Peter?
S1 (07:33):
Another course? Yeah, it sounds like fun. I was great
to get people like Reggie and Rachel involved. I mean,
Rachel is such a talented artist, you know, has done
so many great things sort of publicly for people blind
or low vision with her appearances on The Voice and
other things and and Reggie similarly. So.
S3 (07:49):
Well, Reggie is just out.
S2 (07:51):
Of the I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Uh, jungle.
And it's so funny because Reggie and I raised with
Reggie and I be friends. And we caught up this morning,
Reggie and I, and we were talking about this and
how excited we are to reunite on the 11th again.
But yeah, it's just, you know, it's such a beautiful feeling.
I mean, obviously the night is so special, but just
(08:11):
seeing so many like blind people together and, you know,
advocates and singers and reality TV stars, I think so
many of us come together in one room. You can
really just like look around and well, obviously blind people
can't do anything. You can't become a pilot or like
a brain surgeon, but you sort of look around and
you see people excelling in different fields and you're like, yeah,
(08:31):
you could do a lot of things, you know.
S1 (08:33):
Never say never to pilot or surgery. Karen.
S2 (08:36):
Well, if there's a plane that's flying itself, I'm definitely
not going on that.
S1 (08:41):
Okay. Well, I think it could be the same with
cars in the future, but we'll put that to one
side now. Um, people can attend the event even if
you're not nominated or if you haven't nominated, you can
just attend the event. Have a good night.
S2 (08:53):
Absolutely. Look, it's going to be a night of blind excellence.
It's going to be all the the talent lineup are blind.
Like I said myself as the MC, Reggie is a
red carpet host. Rachel is singing. There's going to be
delicious food, free flowing drinks, live music, entertainment. Obviously you're
going to be there as history is made. When we
have the three Blind Men of the year awards handed
(09:14):
out and networking as well. And this time there's going
to be a trade expo right before. And if you
get your tickets, you get to attend the expo as well. And,
you know, tickets start from $75 if you have a
disability and your companion. So it's really it's affordable and
it's a night you won't forget. It's really I'm not
(09:35):
just saying this because I'm the MC. I'm not just
saying this because I'm saying this because I was there
last year. And just going by the feedback, the old
guard that night was just magic. Honestly, it was magic.
S1 (09:46):
Where is it held?
S2 (09:46):
Where it's being held at the at the Amara Hotel
in Brisbane.
S1 (09:50):
And the date again.
S2 (09:51):
The Saturday the 11th of October. The red carpet starts
with Reggie at 630. Doors open at seven and then
the night begins.
S1 (10:00):
All right, just a bit more about what happens beforehand.
That's obviously a very important thing as well, I guess
just to give people a bit of an idea of
what's going on in that sort of space as well.
S2 (10:09):
Uh, you mean before? Before 630? Yeah, yeah. So we're
going to have, like a mini trade expo. There'll be
some stalls there. You guys are going to be there
as well.
S1 (10:18):
Australia. Yeah.
S2 (10:19):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so there'll be some stores. You
can come and check it out from that it opens
to the red carpet where you get to meet Reggie,
take photos with her. She did that last year as well.
She's the absolute right. You love, love getting to know
her in person. And then doors open at seven. Then
you know we are. I guess I'll get up on
stage and I'll start the thing. And then we have
(10:41):
the awards with a little break in the middle. And
then we're going to have performances. And every time there's
a break, you have a chance to network with other people,
which was actually a really big thing last year. I
didn't expect that much networking. You know, I didn't expect
blind people to be so keen to network with one another.
But that really was the case. In fact, one of
(11:02):
the requests we got was, can we have more time
to network this year?
S1 (11:06):
Haha, yeah, well of course there's so many email lists
and discussion groups through social media etc. which are all
fine and good. But you know when you get to
meet someone face to face, regardless of whether you can
physically see them or not, but when you can speak
to them face to face, it's a whole different, uh,
sort of emphasis on the relationship.
S2 (11:23):
Yeah. And I think because Reggie, Rachel and I, we
do different things, like, uh, we get, you know, we
get approached and we get asked different things, like Reggie
will get asked about her time on reality TV and
what it felt like. You know, Rachael gets asked about her,
her singing experience. I get asked about being an advocate,
you know, because I've done a lot of work with
the media. Like I get asked how I got into it,
that sort of stuff. So it's a lot of community building,
(11:46):
and it's really lovely to share that experience with other
blind people, because there are some young people there that
are actually looking for guidance, and I think it's a
fantastic way to actually lead by example and learn from
someone's lived experience. When you're living with a form of
blindness yourself.
S1 (12:02):
It's a very worthwhile thing and certainly worth supporting. And
it's great that the Queensland Government's got on board. Congratulations
on that. Because governments aren't easy to win over Karen.
S2 (12:10):
So no, not at all.
S1 (12:12):
No, that deal has done a good job.
S2 (12:14):
Oh well I can't take the credit for that. That
goes to Terry. He works really, really hard. And he
he's a superstar Terry. He's such a lovely man and
he's he's making this all happen.
S1 (12:25):
But also on a serious note, I'm being serious here.
But that gives the, uh, the award a bit more
credence and gravitas in a sense, you know, to have
some government support as well. It's, uh, you know, it
just gives a bit more oomph.
S4 (12:36):
I mean, you can say oomph. I feel like it.
It gives you.
S2 (12:39):
A sense of, uh, reassurance that we are being listened
to by these big organizations. I think it's definitely reassuring
and comforting to know that the government, you know, is
not just taking a photograph for an annual report, like
they're actually getting involved, actually doing things, you know. Yeah.
(12:59):
So it's really nice to see that. Yeah.
S1 (13:01):
Very, very well said now. Okay. So where do we
go to uh, online is the best way to nominate.
S4 (13:07):
Absolutely.
S2 (13:08):
Go to Blind Train of the year.com. Uh, and it's
pretty straightforward. It's a blind friendly website. You've got the
nomination tab and the gala tickets tab. You can also
book tables of ten. Um, now the the only thing
I will say is the last, uh, the tickets sold out.
And because there were a lot of people saying they
(13:29):
wanted more tickets. We added more tables to make room
for them. But this year, because of accessibility reasons, we're
not going to be doing that. So like when it
sells out, it sells out. It's. Yeah. And I think
I think after tickets have sold anyway. Fantastic. So there's
not there's you know like considering the awards now less
than three months away, uh, the gala I would say
(13:51):
get your tickets. This is not just a drill like
we will sell out.
S1 (13:54):
Yep. Well, you deserve to. We'll put the details up
with our show notes as far as how people can
book goes. Karen, great to catch up. Hopefully next week
or two, we'll catch up with, uh, Rachel and or
Reggie as well to get their point of view of
how they're going. And maybe we can get them to
do a critique on your emceeing last year as well.
S2 (14:10):
We should do it. I was going to say you
should get all three of us, and we can have
a glass of gin and laugh.
S1 (14:15):
Yeah, great to catch up. Uh. Good luck.
S2 (14:18):
Thanks, Peter. Thank you for having me.
S1 (14:20):
That's the grantee there. He was the emcee. He is
the emcee at the Blind Australian of the year. All
those details up on our show notes. Nominate now. Announcement
October the 11th. Put that in your diary.
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