Ceri Wrobel

Hello my name is Ceri Wrobel & I’m very proud to be a Presenter at 2NVR. I haven’t always lived in the beautiful Nambucca Valley. I was born in Wales, my family moved to London when I was three for my fa-ther’s work.

I trained as a Registered Nurse, studying at the Nightingale School of Nursing, St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, which is steeped in history & tradition, starched aprons & collars, just think ‘Call the Midwife’.

I met an Aussie in a pub in London & the rest is history, as they say. Rick and I travelled extensively in Europe in our Kombi. We then back packed through Asia for 6 months on our way to Australia & my new life! Living in Sydney, Central Coast & in 1993, we moved to a farm in Missabotti, quite a change for the little nurse from London. We brought up our 3 children at Missabotti & absolutely loved it, so different to my, inner city, upbringing.

Over the years I worked in the operating theatre & as a Community Nurse. I was always interested in Health Promotion, instead of waiting for people to get sick & then trying to make them better, so in 2000 I had a big change of career & moved into teaching, as an educator for Life Education, a Drug, Alcohol & Healthy Lifestyle program. Our mascot was a giraffe called Healthy Harold, so I was also a puppeteer! It was an amazing job, visiting 45 different schools a year in my mobile classroom & meeting so many children and staff, helping children to make healthy & safe choices and coping with bullying situations.

In 2009, I saw an article in the newspaper, calling for people to be involved in community radio, I didn’t hesitate, I just thought, yep, that sounds like fun. Even though I was working full time & had 3 teenagers & an exchange student at home & a farm.

I was soon on air at the old studios in Bowraville & was trained by Juliette Tilson & Ron Hawkins & I owe a lot to them. I find people so interesting and very soon started interviewing people with a voice recorder that Rick bought me. This fitted well with a local news show called Nambucca Valley Roundup. I also played new Australian music & the AMRAP charts on another show called CJ the DJ. I later had a show called ‘The Friday Frolic’ & eventually my current show, ‘Talk of the Town’ which catches up with local news & events, promotes musicians &, always, Australian music.

My favourite show that I host at 2NVR is our monthly live music show, ‘Studio 3 Live’, where we have a live performance & invite the community to be part of the audience, plus it all goes live to air & streaming. The artists love the opportunity to have their own radio show the audience & listeners enjoy it and the 2NVR team, who run it, get a great deal of fun and satisfaction.

I have served on the 2NVR committee and was the Vice President for several years. During that time I organised a Regional Conference, which was quite ambitious for a small station, but it was very successful & included interstate speakers & attendees. I was instrumental in applying for many CBAA Voxie awards, which were selected as finalists several times. 2NVR won Voxies on four occasions, one for Community Participation, two as Outstanding Small Station & I received a Voxie for my Various Sports Reports.

I have been on the training team at 2NVR & recently facilitated an interview workshop. I have been invited to speak at the CBAA National Conference three times, twice to deliver Interview Skills workshops & once to provide feedback on our Regional Conference to other stations. My series, ‘Outback Adventures’ was accepted by the CRN, Community Radio Network & made available to all Community stations in Australia. The series was also played by ABC Radio, as a result, I was offered casual work as a producer at ABC Midnorth Coast; by the late, Michael Spooner, unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right and it wasn’t to be, but lovely recognition anyway. I now have a new series, from our recent travels to WA, called ‘Crocs, Rocks & Character’. I love community radio!