TO CELEBRATE International Women’s Day, the Cardinia Environment Coalition held a ‘Cardinia Women in Conservation’ dinner earlier this month at the Pakenham Golf Club where four women – who live or work in Cardinia, or both – spoke about their journeys as conservationists.
Their stories are all inspirational in showing all they’ve done to contribute to their local environment and making it more sustainable for the generations to come.
One of the speakers, Vivien Clarke, is the owner and manager of the Maryknoll Indigenous Nursery. She started propagating native plants in 1997 when she became aware of the particularly low numbers around on sale, and she registered her business in 1999.
“When I first met Vivien and her family, I just thought how lucky her children were to have such a passionate botanical lesson as they went, and a very-well founded love of the bush,” said Cardinia Environment Coalition president, Elizabeth Fraser.
“I often think of the saying ‘from little things, big things grow’ when I visit nurseries such as Vivien’s.
“Watching a habitat for animals emerge over the years must be very satisfying.”
Vivien spoke on being a ‘resilient conservationist’.
“In my early twenties, I joined the YHA bushwalking group and our first walk was at the Prom,” she told the packed function room at the golf club.
“I loved it so much that I put my name down for weekend walks.
“One of the areas that I loved were the alpine areas around Mt Feathertop and Mt Kosciuszko with fields of magnificent wildflowers, snowgums and views that stretch forever. That one experience set me on a path of a lifetime love of bushwalking and enjoying the natural world.”
Now the owner and manager of the Maryknoll Indigenous Plant Nursery, Vivien remembers – about 20 years ago – pulling out flax-leaf broom at White’s Corner in the town with a conservation student with the Maryknoll Tracks and Reserves Group and not having any local indigenous plants to replace the weeds.
“I started growing a few local plants to supply plants for Maryknoll Tracks and Reserves Group, and also for Back Creek Landcare projects,” she said.
“Bessie Creek, Deep Creek and Toomuc Valley Landcare groups came on board and bought plants from me as well.
“I started propagating plants in 1997 and registered my business in 1999.
“I decided that I wanted the best outcome for each project, so I did site visits to check out the site initially, to find out what the customer required and to check for clues to work out the most appropriate plants from the existing vegetation and soil aspect.
“I was also keen for the customer to plant a range of trees, shrubs and groundcovers to replicate our bushland.”
Vivien has been hard at work at the plant nursery since, doing her part as a resilient conservationist.
Karen Alexander (OAM) was another local who presented at the Cardinia Environment Coalition function.
She was one of the instigators of the group about 15 years ago. Elizabeth describes her old Upwey High School friend as “a visionary in seeing gaps, particularly in environmental need, who manages to bring the right people together”.
Karen has also worked as an activist, notably in Tasmania in the battle to save the Franklin River, and has been involved in a range of environmental organisations – both national and international. In 2014 she was named Emerald’s Citizen of the Year, and last year was awarded the medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in recognition of her incredible work in conservation.
Karen told the story of her “ecological self”.
“You may like to think about where you got your ecological commitment from and where it might’ve actually started,” she said to the group.
“My first realisation about a passion for the environment came with Lake Pedder.
“It was an extraordinary place in southwest Tasmania and I’d gone bushwalking there and swum in the creek, and climbed the mountains.”
The once natural lake is now a man-made impoundment formed by the damming of the Serpentine and Huon Rivers in the 1970s by the Hydro Electic Commission.
“At the age of 19 or 20, I was horrified by this,” she said.
“I did my first experience as a volunteer going into the office in the Tasmanian Environment Centre and asking what I could do.
“The guy there said I could write an article on it. I walked out and never went back – that was too much.”
But in reality the beginning of Karen’s ‘ecological self’ could be traced to her upbringing in Belgrave.
“We had five acres of land, including bushland, and it really was a playground for children,” she said.
“It was a playground for fairy dells and cubbies, and creating all sorts of fabulous things.
“The other thing we had was Sherbrooke Forest in our backyard and from a very early age both my parents would take us in there – primarily to look for lyrebirds with visitors. But from my experience, I think as early as seven or eight we were off in that forest with our friends exploring.
“Learning to be comfortable in the bush off the track, crawling through the bush to try and see lyrebirds dancing and lying on your back staring up at those enormous trees … what a fabulous upbringing for children, and I think it really set the tone of adoring being in the bush, but the other side of that is seeing it be destroyed so you work to have it protected.”
After 12 years of schooling, Karen went on to Monash University … where she did a maths degree, clearly not yet completely understanding her ecological self.
“I fortunately failed everything in second year, which got me onto a different path.
“I had some side-effects of being at Monash University – that’s where I met my partner of now almost 40 years, and I have very strong memories of the extra-curricular activities there and the talks that would happen over the many cups of coffee about places; New Zealand, the Alps, the Andes, Antarctica, southwest Tasmania, and really I think that sort of conversation and those visions led me to doing a lot of bushwalking in Tasmania and eventually visiting some really extraordinary places with other people.”
Karen eventually did get a degree – in natural resource management.
It wasn’t long before she was working tirelessly on the Franklin campaign.
“The loss of Lake Pedder, and my underlying anger about that … I wasn’t going to let the bastards get the Franklin River,” she said.
“Many things came out of that, including working with people like Bob Brown and many other wonderful and extraordinary people.
“There were other things too – the value of photos and images to inspire people who were never going to visit that river. The other thing, which was something to learn from, was the persistence and the need to just keep on going.
“This was a project that should never be built … it just did not make sense, and yet we almost lost it. It was just the luck of Malcolm Fraser having a bad back at the end of December 1982 so he didn’t hold an election.
“The blockade happened in 1982, and it meant that whole publicity was raised about it. When the election was in March the first thing that Hawke said when they got in was that the dam would not be built.
“If it’d been held in December, who knows. Fortunately when it went to the High Court it was a 4-3 decision. I think that’s the role of luck.”
Karen’s role on the Wilderness Society led to her “thinking big” and doing a series of six 50-minute documentaries on wilderness areas around Australia. She has also volunteered at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in her time overseas. Despite her excitement at being offered a job within the program, Karen didn’t see it as offering a way to be able to actually change anything tangible.
She came home and worked at the Australian Conservation Foundation but eventually, continuing with somewhat of a pattern, she became “burnt out”.
“There is an interesting thing about working too hard, in that it’s often hiding something that you need to deal with,” she said.
“I would imagine it’s something we’ve all dealt with – a sense of depression and grief about how the state of the world is.
“This is ridiculous weather for March. We know that, and at one level we feel it.
“Getting on top of that and understanding it was a great lesson for my ecological self.”
For Karen, the biggest change for me was reaching out locally.
“We lived up at Clematis then – we bought 24 acres of land that my grandfather had cleared (except for a few trees). The mountain ashes were there but it was really not a very healthy piece of bush. We’re extremely pleased to be able to say that it’s about to be covenanted. It’s now in the process anyway.”
Keep an eye on the Gazette in the coming weeks for part two of the Cardinia Environment Coalition series.
