Lithgow City Council welcomed nine new Australian Citizens at its latest Citizenship Ceremony.
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One of the new citizens included Lucie Lebrunet, who was born and grew up in France.
"I grew up in this beautiful part of France called Brittany, in a little town called Dinan, it's got lots of history and is such a beautiful part of France," she said.
Before arriving in Australia almost exactly 11 years ago, Lucie was in Montreal, Canada.
"I arrived because my girlfriend at the time asked me to come and visit her and her partner in Australia, so I was like 'okay I'll just come and see you guys there' and I arrived in Sydney and long story short after that I stayed," she said.
"I believe August 27 was the date I arrived actually."
Lucie officially moved to Lithgow around Christmas time in 2012.
"My ex is from Wallerawang so we came to Lithgow to celebrate Christmas and we stayed because we kind of got stuck in Lithgow," she said.
Lucie said that she really enjoys the national parks around Lithgow, such as the Wollemi National Park.
"I'm mainly in the Mountains to be honest but Lithgow is such a nice area," she said.
Lucie said there were three main reasons as to why she applied for her citizenship.
"I have been in Australia so long and I was on a permanent resident visa for over five years and the thing with the permanent resident visa is if you are on it for over five years you have to apply for a return visa to come back to Australia, it costs about $350 so I was like 'Oh I don't really want to do that, so lets look for citizenship'," she said.
"The citizenship was probably a couple hundred bucks more than that, so that's one of the reasons, the second reason is I've got two children who have an Australian passport so I thought it would be easier if I was Australian and the third reason is I don't think I will ever go back to live in France, just for holidays maybe, so I thought it would be a good idea to get an Australian passport."
Becoming an Australian citizen was important to Lucie, especially because being separated from her small children was difficult for her.
"It was just a big relief thing to be an Aussie...that's the main reason it was important to me, it was for the children, but what a beautiful country it is, we just have to admit it, especially the Blue Mountains, what a beautiful part of Australia it is," she said.
"Lithgow included of course."
Lucie said it wasn't a difficult journey to get Australian citizenship and she was pretty amazed at how easy it was to obtain.
"I applied for it online, downloaded the paperwork, sent it back to them and a few months later, because it's a long process, maybe six, seven months later I got a phone call to tell me about an interview and citizenship test that I had to pass," she said.
Lucie went on to do her interview and citizenship test in Orange, taking her around 10 minutes.
"It took me like 10 minutes to do the interview and test, so it was pretty easy and very casual, so I didn't find it difficult but that's just my personal case," she said.
The official ceremony which took place on August 5, at Lithgow City Council, was a different type of ceremony due to COVID-19 restrictions.
"I wish I could've invited more people to come along but we were only allowed to bring two people with us and there was no afternoon tea and like gathering after, because of the thing, but it was still pretty good and went pretty quick as well and was pretty casual so it was good little ceremony I guess," she said.
The ceremony saw Member for Calare, the Hon. Andrew Gee and Lithgow mayor, Cr Ray Thompson welcome the new citizens to Australia and the Lithgow Local Government area as they completed the final stage in becoming an Australian Citizen.
Minister Andrew Gee and Mayor Thompson welcomed Eileen Dodd, Iain Black, Mark Campbell, Gary Cooke, Bruce Hargrave, Marian Jerga, Lucie Lebrunet, Devan Oosthuizen and Geraldine Stieda.
"It was a great honour to have the Hon. Andrew Gee preside over the ceremony, it was an even greater honour for not only myself but the new citizens to have him attend," Cr Thompson said.
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