After a long and intensive process the people of The Gurgler have spoken, and local Councillor for Forest Lake Charles Strunk has won the 2016 Gurgler Person of the Year.
The local politician took out the third annual Golden Turpie by beating a quality field of The Gurgler’s favourite people for 2016.
Who could argue he deserves it either. After a long career of serving the Palaszuk dynasty, in addition to many local goodwill organisations in Inala-Forest Lake, he has made a decent fist of being the Brisbane City Councilor at his first attempt after winning the Council Election earlier in 2016.
We loved him in 2016, and so have the Person of the Year voters.
More of his achievements can be read at our initial nomination piece.
But the voting was tight in the end. Sure that is because f*** all people visit our website, and even fewer could be bothered voting, but it is still the voice of our people because there was no way we could rig it this year.
It could be a worse result than to have a man of Charles Strunk as a Person of the Year given the horrible year of election results in UK, US, Australia and Queensland.
Runner up this year is a good news story with regular Gurgler contributor Frankington Stanley getting the second highest amount of votes. It wasn’t just us at the Gurgler who enjoyed his contributions, but his many fans who gave him more votes than Olympians, PGA Tour Winning golfers, the Strongest Man in Football, and the greatest website in Australia.
Three of those listed above shared third place, but none were no less worthy of the top prize, despite being beaten this year by Charles Strunk.
Those three had a great anyway with Loudy Wiggins/Tourky being awarded our Forgotten Olympian of all time, Rod Pampling won on the US PGA Tour, and Betoota Advocate released a book about the best bits from their website. Plenty of achievement there, so missing out on the golden Turpie won’t hurt as much.
In sixth place was the Man Mountain Adebayo Akinfenwa, part of the AFC Wimbledon promotion wining side. The strongest man in Football didn’t have a strong enough support to get him the Gurgler Person of the Year, but he is still a favourite of ours, despite moving to Wycombe.
Charles Strunk now joins the illustrious list of former Golden Turpie winners like 2014’s Reggie the Rabbitoh and 2015 winner Willie Minoga.
The 2016 Gurgler Person of the Year may not be a household name, but that’s the point. We celebrate the forgotten, the underrated, the unappreciated here at The Gurgler, and Charles Strunk ticks a few of those boxes. His is a name we love and trust, and one very few outside of Brisbane’s south west would know.
They should, and hopefully by now they do, with his 2016 Gurgler Person of the Year award.
Here are the final poll results. Stay tuned to The Gurgler for next year’s nominations and winners.
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