Noelene Hyde receives public service award following crucial role during fires, COVID

She has now been rewarded for those efforts, receiving a much-deserved public service award as part of the Australia Day honours.

Ms Hyde has worked at Tenterfield Shire Council since 2006, first serving as an executive assistant before being asked to also take on a communications role. She said getting such high recognition for her work was an honour.

"For me it was a bit humbling, I knew I'd been nominated by one of my fellow coworkers at Tenterfield, and I guess that came off the back of some really hard years," she said.

"We had the drought, the extended fire season, the town just about ran out of water and we followed that on with COVID."

Ms Hyde said she felt a sense of pride in being able to provide information to the public when they needed it most.

"I did communications which was getting information out to the community, which made such a huge difference because the community can be very critical if they don't know what's going on," she said.

"But once they actually found out what was going on they had a very positive reaction to that."

Her public service experience goes back well beyond her time in Tenterfield though.

Ms Hyde first joined the Forestry Commission in Glen Innes in 1973, before moving to Perth five years later to take up a similar role. She would later take up a PA role for the mayor, first in Belmont and later back in the New England in Armidale.

She is now able to sit back and relax having retired in May last year, but will able to reflect fondly upon her career, especially now she has an award to show for it.