Honoured and surprised, is how Dorothy Hamilton described being acknowledged with a Vision Australia Award for her services and commitment to the blind and low vision community.
Dorothy has dedicated the past 37 years to installing a love of music and braille into young people who are blind or have low vision.
“I’m surprised to receive the award because I was really following my passion and what interested me. Of course I’m very honoured to be chosen. I would like to thank the people who nominated me,” Dorothy said.
Dorothy’s music achievements
Born with a love of music, Dorothy was inspired and encouraged to study piano as far as she could and went on to become the first blind woman in the Southern Hemisphere to complete a bachelor of music.
Dorothy set up a private teaching practice with over 40 adult and children students. It was around this time that the genesis or the National Braille Music Camp was born.
“In the early ‘80s there were about 10 of us blind musicians who’d completed their bachelor of music. And we all got together for a weekend of singing and music.
“We sight read (reading with one hand) the braille music scores and we thought the whole experiencing of making music with other blind people was too wonderful to keep it to ourselves.
‘It was also the time of children who were blind were being integrated into main- stream school and we were concerned that they would miss out on music education and learning to read music. We knew we had to involve children and pass it on to them.’
You can listen to Dorothy discussing her life’s work with a former student, Tess Herbert, below.
First handed out in 2006, the Vision Australia Awards are given in recognition of people and organisations which give up their time and resources to support the work of Vision Australia and the wider blind and low vision community.
You can view the full list of Vision Australia Awards winners here.