For 24 years, James Kemsley produced Australia's longest running cartoon strip.Today, he has been posthumously recognised with one of the nation's highest honours.Kemsley, who died last December, has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service as a cartoonist and illustrator of Ginger Meggs.Late of Welby near Mittagong, the father of three was also honoured for his eight years as a councillor on Wingecarribee Shire Council and his service as a Bradman Foundation director.Son Jed, 21, said the OAM was wonderful recognition for his father and what he had accomplished in his 59 years."If he was still alive he would be humbled by it, but I don't think he would have made a big deal of it," Jed said."I know a lot of people knew him as the Ginger Meggs artist, but he was a quiet achiever. He would have just taken it on board."In 1984 Kemsley became the fourth cartoonist to take over the custodianship of Ginger Meggs, the likeable, red-headed larrikin first created by Jimmy Bancks more than 85 years ago.Under his penmanship, Ginger Meggs was revitalised and his first book Ginger Meggs at Large sold over 300,000 copies.In 1993, 72 years after it debuted as a Sunday strip, Kemsley began a daily version for the Illawarra Mercury and it was soon picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Courier Mail in Brisbane, before expanding to worldwide distribution.In the late 1960s and early '70s, Kemsley was known to children's television audiences as "Skeeter the Paperboy" on the Super Flying Fun Show, and then as host of Skeeter's Cartoon Corner.A cricket buff, he was a founding member of the Bradman Museum of Cricket in Bowral, and one of only a handful of life members.Jed said he believed Ginger Meggs was an alter-ego for his father."Ginger Meggs was dad's way of expressing himself," he said."Later on when he worked at home, he would bounce ideas off us. We were very much a family unit and lucky to have that time with him."He said that happy bond, shared between he and his brothers Hywel, 18, and Seb, 11, and mum Helen, no doubt provided inspiration for one or two of his father's comic strips.Kemsley died on December 3 after an 18-month battle with motor neurone disease.