Meet the storytellers

“You fence a bit here and you plant a few trees there and you think well how on earth is this going to make a difference in the longer term? But the thing is, over time, it all adds up and when everybody’s doing it suddenly you can’t go anywhere without seeing amazing work that’s been done over a long period of time that is making a fantastic difference.”

“My home is close to the [Frankland] river and throughout my life I’ve spent many wonderful hours rock-hopping and swimming, paddling up and down, exploring, learning about the biodiversity along it and the creatures that live in it.”

“Worryingly, they discovered that three of the very few locations where there had been relatively recent records of the parrots had since been cleared and turned into farmland.”

“With Gondwana Link, we decided right at the beginning that we had to look to the bush for our inspiration. We had to learn from the wisdom of the last 250 million years. And as a fundamental principle, try to ensure that the diversity of actions we were taking came close to reflecting the diversity of the bush and habitats and communities that we’re working across.”

“The whole thing of farming is such a challenge of how you farm with nature. That’s always been my thing, trying to work out how we can do that more effectively. There’s so many ecological functions provided by biodiversity, like pollination and insect management, and recycling of nutrients.”

I had the privilege of being able to experience the spiritual strength of our old people who shared a strong connection to the land. Their spiritual strength shone through them with their relationship to nature and gave them the power to overcome adversity and go forward with pride in their cultural beliefs.

“I am a ‘people person’, so working with the community and working with passionate people is just really energising. At university I found researching by myself and working in a laboratory quite tiring, but when I came home and went for walks in the bush and was around amazing, committed, knowledgeable people, I felt more hopeful and revitalised. Being with them, I’ve learned that a lot of environmental recovery is done by volunteers because they care, they make the effort to learn, and they truly make a difference to their little patch.”

“So what we’re trying to do now is imagine a landscape where some of the original functionality is restored by reconnecting isolated bush areas and biodiversity through ecological plantings. This will improve the resilience of native plant and animal populations (their ability to cope with fire and drought), and enable farming to be more sustainable, such as through soil stability and the presence of more beneficial species.“

“When we were young, our family ‒ Grandfather Eades and his sons ‒ worked on farms during the land clearing years, burning up and cutting down and dealing with fire all the time. We learnt the cultural side of fire from a very young age from my other grandfather, Pa Chris Penny, and Grandmother Agnes. We didn’t mess around with fire; you don’t do that. That’s wiirnitch. That’s bad to do that.”

“There’s a great energy out here within the land. Noongars call it mabarn. It’s a power, it’s an energy that was used to make unwell people well again, and seeing the people that come here to Nowanup, whether they’re non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal, always go away feeling much more better than they’ve come.”

“On a cold wet wintry day in 1991, some university colleagues and I ventured out to extract cores of sediment from this small heavily vegetated lake.  Wading up to our waists in icy water to retrieve over three metres of peat material and then getting it all back home for pollen analysis was an experience.  But I was hooked!”

“When we talk about boodja, we respect boodja, because boodja to us is our Mother Earth, and her bloodline and her strength and what flowed through her sustained us as a people, a community, as a society. Even though you don’t see infrastructure like the Empire State Building or Sydney Harbour Bridge, our infrastructure in the bush. We take care of it, we protect it, we preserve it, why? Because it does the same for us.”

“We like the idea that we are a little spot right here, but we actually fit into a bigger picture within the Ranges Link area and then within the Gondwana Link area as well. Because the things that we’re doing, we’re not just doing for ourselves here on Twin Creeks. We’re part of a much larger operation that’s happening. I think we’re pretty proud of that.” (Lucia Quearry, Chair)

“They are just spectacular. I don’t think anyone can look at a numbat and not be impressed by them … Here’s this animal with vivid colours – reddish brown with black and white stripes and a black stripe through the eye.  Although it seems hard to believe, I think their colour gives them camouflage. They are diurnal animals, which means they are active during the day, but in a dappled light, the numbat just disappears into the background.“

“I think a sense of place gives your life deeper meaning and informs your identity. A sense of place gives you purpose … It is that connection with people, connection with the environment and connection with yourself and feeling part of a community … I guess that’s why it is an important thing in my life to embrace and include people and offer opportunity, especially to connect through the arts.”

“Around Woodanilling there is the wandoo woodlands, a threatened ecological community, and the salmon gum country – you don’t have to go much further east, where that’s all been cleared out for the big machinery. And for the phascogale, the little animal that we rant and rave about, this area is a sanctuary. This semi-arid zone is the only place left that they are found, after once being so widespread across Australia.”

“So what we’re trying to do now is imagine a landscape where functionality is restored, and connectivity is restored. We’re trying to imagine a system where farming can be more productive, but where biodiversity is reconnected across the landscape, and the resilience of plant and animal populations is improved.“

“The wetland was deep in the tingle forest–granite–wetland ecosystems north of Bow Bridge – a delightful swamp nestled in a broad valley, with deep peats, still spongy even though the surroundings were drying out as summer was taking hold.”

“This arid evergreen vegetation is amazing and it’s the complexity that actually drew me here. If you want to do restoration, it’s like anybody can fill out an easy crossword puzzle, but when the crossword puzzle gets challenging that’s when it becomes more interesting. Unpacking this flora, and the relationship between the soils and the plants and where they grow and what they grow with – that is a challenge that is exciting.”

“When you look at mountains and hills – we call them Kaart. Our heads are kaart. So when we are on country we’re amongst kaart, amongst the great mountains. We know they’ve got eyes and ears. And they’re watching our every move, so we have to show those kaart special consideration. We have to respect them.”

“I think having worked in the environment for a long time, you just, you see the place of where humans fit into the web of life. And if we’re too destructive, nature will just flick us out sideways. So if we are more respectful and live a little bit more gently and respectfully, with all the other organisms around us, we may be able to move into the future.”

“In Kojonup we don’t have the big fields of everlastings like up in the Murchison, but in a square metre, we can find you a dozen to two dozen different plant species.“

“This area is one of the biodiversity hotspots. Just on one property you can have 700 species of plants growing naturally – that’s extreme. And you can’t help be sort of blown away by it if you know anything about plants at all.”   

“Living in a community like Katanning, that is so engaged in landcare, I am continually buoyed by the number of farmers that are tree planting. They’re wanting to fence off their remnant vegetation, they are actively increasing the amount of perennial pastures in their farm systems, they are talking about soil carbon, carbon sequestration into their soil.”

“Everyone loves wildflowers to look at, to photograph or study. There is still a lot remaining to preserve and regenerate. Can the knowledge, appreciation, money, dedication and action be found to make it happen?”

“My cold fingers weren’t up to the task, and the piece [of chocolate] fell on the floor. To find it, I got out of the sheltering car and that was when I heard a very clear ground parrot call. It was almost dark, two or three stars were out, and it was around 40 minutes after sunset.”

“The essential thing is the land, the Boodja. Because we’re on the Boodja, we’ve got our storylines, we’ve got the hills, we’ve got the rivers, we’ve got the flora, we’ve got the fauna. We teach with the totemic system, which is our religious belief. We then talk about the storylines with the hills, the creation of the landscape.”

“We’ve been taught to disconnect because places around us are being destroyed all the time. That’s traumatic. We see the natural world being destroyed, so we disconnect — we say, ‘That’s not me’. But then we disconnect from what brings us deep joy as well … I think we have to connect to country to start developing the will to help it.“

“Neobatrachus emerge after major rain events, prompting herpetologists like me to watch the weather closely. Long before the Internet, after I moved to Perth, I used to listen to the regional rainfall reports on the ABC Radio’s “Country Hour” every day. Twenty-five mm or more and a colleague or student and I were off: to the wheatbelt or, crazily, as far as Kalgoorlie and Menzies.“

“Through the time I have spent with the Elders on Country yarning about fire, they have taught me that there is no distinction between campfires, which are the social centre of life, and small controlled burns used to clean up and care for Country.”

“You don’t go for a walk in this bush and not find something that you either haven’t seen before or didn’t expect to see there. It’s a very special and unique environment. The ecology of here we’re only just beginning to understand, the complexity of this ancient Gondwanaland flora, the complexity and the interrelations with invertebrates and other animals is just incredible.“

“I feel strongly that Balijup is not just a property where we are restoring the environment, it’s also a place of education. School groups visit, and our citizen science teams include university students doing environmental degrees, as well as TAFE students studying conservation land management. The work at Balijup provides these tertiary students with essential experience in working with wildlife. For me it’s fantastic to have a practical project where we can train the next generation to care for our environment.”

“I enjoy the thrill of the hunt!  I just grab my bucket, my waxed lunch wrap, some plastic containers, and my trusty truffle rake, then off I go to find fungi. I’ve made 3,234 fully documented collections so far, including a few bryophytes and lichens from expeditions in the rangelands.” 

“Jane and I always wanted to be active participants in a large conservation project… and in a rush of blood purchased “Yarraweyah Falls” in the heart of the Fitz-Stirling. This region of Western Australia is amazingly diverse. If you include our Bush Heritage neighbours’ properties, there are over 900 native species identified so far.”

“Traditional ignition methods were used with dried bushes, along with modern drip torches where needed. Aunty Eliza said she and Aunty Annette “felt like little girls again — how happy we were, rekindling the old practices that our parents and old people used to do.”

“So we were very interested in properties that were threatened, that were biologically diverse, that could be cleared at any time, or had been cleared before, and could be again… This property is an attempt from us to hold the bulwark, and to set an example for other people that in fact it can be done, you can do something, and it isn’t difficult, but you have to want to do it.”

“The burns were quite moving. It really does take you back. Even though the methods are a little bit different, the principles and the purpose behind it are the same. We don’t burn because we want to have fun or make smoke. There must be a purpose behind everything you do in the bush. We don’t just go out there so that someone can get a certificate saying they dealt with fire. It’s more than that.”

“I firmly believe that the methods of prescribed burning need urgent, expert, independent review. This review needs to include an assessment of the scientific evidence associated with prescribed burning. Fire prescriptions must be adapted for drying times and the voices of local communities should be heard. Government agencies tend to come up with blanket approaches which I believe are compromising the great biodiversity of the lands being managed. I am motivated to speak out because I have visited far too many areas where prescribed fires have left scenes no different from those after wildfires. We need to burn with care.”

“Over my birdwatching years, I’ve seen how nature all joins and works together to provide good habitat. When you see birds breeding it means the conditions in that habitat are right for them.”