Macedon Ranges welcomed 17 new Australian citizens to the leafy shire this month at a ceremony in Kyneton.
Hosted on Tuesday, April 1 at the Kyneton Town Hall, the new citizens pledged their loyalty to Australia and received citizenship certificates and commemorative gifts.
The new citizens were originally born in countries including the Phillipines, England, Ireland, New Zealand, the United States, Iran, China, and South Africa.
New citizen Alexander Smith said he and his partner Elyse Lancaster initially arrived in Australia in 2017 from Nottingham and Harrow in England respectively and had a seven-year journey to citizenship – including three months of farm work in Queensland to extend their initial visa for a second year.
“[It felt] really special actually, because we’d been working up to it for a long time and we’d intended from early on to become citizens in that journey … it was a feeling of pride and success having finally done it,” Mr Smith said.
“We were living in the city for a long time in Brunswick, and we just wanted a taste of the rural life, so we moved up to Woodend. [We’ve] been there for about a year and half [and] really love it,” he said.
Mayor Dom Bonanno said the ceremony is “always a special and happy occasion” and that he enjoys seeing the “smiles on the people’s faces – especially the kids.”
“Whether your ancestors have been here for thousands of years, hundreds of years, a first generation Aussie like myself, or a new Aussie, such as yourselves, we are all Australian. And my hope is that we look to the future of our country with optimism and hope for a better future, much like my parents did,” Cr Bonanno said.
