JESSE NEILL

GAWLER’S Sheila Willox is moving on from her role as head of the Gawler Graffiti Removal Team, and was farewelled by friends and colleagues at the Southern Hotel last week.

Sheila began her career with the Gawler Council in 1984 and has moved through various departments, however she said her highlight has been the volunteer development officer role.

“During that time I set up a volunteer resource centre for the whole of the district – we had up to 150 volunteers,” she said.

“The last seven years I’ve been working part-time, exclusively running the volunteer graffiti removal program.”

Sheila started the initiative in 2001 with the help of then councillor Brian Thom and Gawler mayor Tony Piccolo, who is now the Member for Light.

She said the executive team needed to do something about the town’s vandalism and they knew volunteers would be the most reliable for the job.

In terms of the actual processes for removing graffiti, Sheila described quite a complicated and technical process.

“Within Gawler we’ve got so many heritage buildings that it’s quite a skilful approach involving steam cleaners, special removal equipment and chemicals,” she said.

“It can vary from removing a bit of paint from a stobie pole to really technical things on a monument or heritage wall.”

Now that she’s moved away from Gawler and is retiring from both a working and voluntary role with the council, Sheila said she’s going to put her feet up and enjoy time with her grandchild.

Her presence will be missed by the other members of the Graffiti Removal Team, especially by the second-longest serving volunteer after Sheila, Peter Bailey.

Peter said Sheila was a brilliant leader and ran the program extremely well.

“Sheila was really good at making the team more effective and getting on top of our graffiti problem; we were able to cut down our workload from four full-days to three half-days,” he said.

“Thanks to Sheila the guys knew exactly what they had to do, and it ran really smoothly.”

Graffiti can be reported to SA Police on 8522 0400 and if the act is witnessed, phone 131 444.

For graffiti removal, phone Gawler Council on 8522 9211 and provide details.