Community and Conservation Planner

The business of Plannerdon, established in 2019, is a way for me to directly offer my skills and expertise to the landholders and community of the Gympie region. Plannerdon currently provides services to a few regular clients who rely on my knowledge and experience to guide their conservation goals on their properties. Working for not-for-profit organisations improving our natural environment by "planting trees and killing weeds" supported my ethic. This phrase has focused my work to achieve outcomes that support improving biodiversity, in turn creating resilience in native habitats to the impacts of human development.

My connection to the conservation movement has been lifelong, from my earliest memories of concern for blue whales and watching David Attenborough with mountain gorillas to formative memories of visiting my Aunty Cress in the 70s and 80s. The wallum environment of the Meridan Plains near Caloundra is a spectacularly diverse place, which she helped me to appreciate and connect with, particularly the wildflowers. Cresswell Road (named in her memory) forms one of the few wildlife bridges on the Sunshine Coast crossing over Caloundra Road near where her home of Mitta-keri was located.

In 1999 completing a short three-month course in conservation gave me the basic skills of plant identification and horticultural practices. After participating in a couple of projects I was lucky to score a position supervising a project to establish walking tracks at the new Maroochy Bushland Botanic Gardens at Tanawah between 2000 and 2001. At this point, my partner, Michelle Honey, and I moved to Tuckekoi in the middle of the Mary Valley and maintained a homestead garden at Bollier Park. Volunteering at Gympie Landcare regularly provided the opportunity to become a Green Corps Team Leader in 2003 on a project dealing with Cats Claw Creeper at the Six Mile Creek Rest Area, which was a collaboration between Gympie Landcare, Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee, World Wide Fund for Nature and the Department of Transport and Main Roads. Three more Green Corps teams in the Gympie region followed before starting work for Noosa Landcare in 2005. Completing various projects there until 2010, including an award-winning rainforest rehabilitation project working with landholders in the Kin Kin Creek catchment.

In 2009 our son was born and we moved to Gympie, where we bought an old worker's cottage on Red Hill, in one of the nicest neighbourhoods with the Rattler train on the back fence. While working on a farm at Cootharaba in 2011, building stock fences and controlling Giant Rats Tail Grass, I enrolled at the University of the Sunshine Coast in a Bachelor of Regional and Urban Planning. Our daughter was born in 2012, and between then and 2018 working part-time for Gympie Landcare on projects focusing on the biological controls being released for Cats Claw Creeper as well as assisting the contracting services branch with on-ground works. Graduating in 2017 with my Bachelor's degree with Class IIA Honours, with a major in human geography and a minor in Indigenous studies. My final year project evaluated the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in the Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council and Gympie Regional Council planning schemes.

Approached in 2017 by the Wolvi and District Memorial Hall to assist with sourcing government grants and continued to work with them until 2020, assisting with liaison with the local council regarding funding and governance issues. In 2019 One Mile State School P&C accepted my nomination as President staying in that position until 2023. During this period the school held its 150th anniversary fete, experienced the impacts on education of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was inundated by the 2022 Gympie floods. Following the flooding much of the vegetation in the school grounds was removed due to concerns over flood impact. Helping design and oversee the establishment of a vegetated screen visible from Brisbane Road, shade trees around the playgrounds, and dividing the ovals is a lasting legacy.

My passion for the natural environment of this part of the world is demonstrated by my commitment to the work I do in the conservation field. I want to see this region progress in a positive direction by assisting landholders and community groups to develop comprehensive plans that improve the area for humans and nature alike.