On Friday 14th October, 200 guests attended the Hillross Top Bloke Awards at the City Beach Function Centre. With Illawarra’s top 5 young men ready to showcase their passion for volunteering, their volunteer achievements was simply outstanding.

It was safe to say that no one was jealous of the 3 judges for the night who had an extremely difficult task ahead of them. MP Victor Dominello, Minister for Communities and Citizenship, Dianne Chalk, Director of Hillross Fairy Meadow and Greg Millan, Founder and Coordinator of the National Men’s Health Service all sat on the judging panel ready to find the next Hillross Top Bloke of the Year.

First segment started off nice and light, with each finalist introduced by the MC, a short introductory video and then the 2 minute prepared speech. The finalists were inspiring, funny and at times challenged the audience in their thinking of young men and volunteering. Then came segment two – the ultimate test: the Stereotype Challenge. Each audience member submitted a stereotype that they often hear about young men. Each finalist then randomly selected a stereotype from the silver bowl (ohh the silver bowl) and had up to 2 minutes to address that stereotype. Stereotype highlights – finding out that in fact not all young men think about sex and that Bon Jovi actually eats 11 weet bix’s (yeah long story – video coming shortly). Segment Three – the Judges Questions was the judges final chance to test the finalists on their feet. Questions from ‘What would you do if you were Prime Minister for a Day?’ (And yup – making Melbourne Cup Day a public holiday was in the top 3 policy changes!) to ‘What is the hardest feeling you have ever felt?’, each finalist shared their stories, passion and hopes for the future.

Then came the announcements.

Winner of the Finalists Choice Award - where finalists vote on which other finalist they respect the most – Winner - Ben Abraham

Winner of the Peoplecare People’s Choice Award - where the public voted online for their favourite Top Blok – Winner - Joey Dawson

Winner of the Hillross Top Bloke Award for 2011 and $3,000 for their volunteer organisation – as voted by the judges on the evening - Celli Lloyd

But we might just keep it there for now…watch this space for the video highlights. We give thanks to each Finalist, Judge and Sponsor for helping to make this night happen. All money raised on the night goes towards the Winner’s Volunteer Organisation (Celli announced on the night that he intends to split his prize money with all 5 finalists volunteer organisations), as well as supporting the Top Blokes Foundation develop and implement new community programs to reach more young men.