“I’ve been in Lismore for 21 years. I packed all my belongings into an old Holden Monaro with my one year old son in the back and moved up here to study at Southern Cross. It’s been a bit of a hard slog on my own, I have a daughter too. I was part of the first cohort to study Forestry at the uni. I’ve always been interested in the environment and heavily involved against old growth logging. I thought here I am out here protesting for something I really don’t know much about so that’s part of the reason I decided to do Forestry. I was then able to say why I was against it.
I’m a high school Science teacher. When I was at uni I was always helping or tutoring people and they would tell me I should teach. I was like, no way! I hated high school, I didn’t even finish high school. Here I am now a teacher for the last 8 years and I absolutely love it.
I’m really passionate about the environment. I teach Marine Studies as well as Agriculture. I do a lot of work at school with the kids and our environmental team. We look at the plastic problem and pollution. I show the movie ‘Bag it’. I really enjoy educating kids from a young age. We’re now seeing ramifications like bleaching of coral, the great pacific garbage patch and we are starting to see it but we need to be doing something about it now. Some people think, ‘I’m just one person’ but lets get communities together then communities get together at a state level and then a national level. There’s flow on, little bit by little bit.
I remember when I was learning Bush Regeneration there was the Bradley Method where you start at one section you can look after, that you can control and you totally eradicate the weed from that section. I think we can apply that to this. Lets look at our community of Lismore and look at banning the bag and then get other communities involved. There’s already over 50 groups like this, not only in Australia but in NZ and one has started in the US.
I’ve started the group here in Lismore, Boomerang Bags Lismore. Boomerang Bags was started in 2013 by 2 women in Burleigh Heads and since then it has been growing. It has the aim of using recycled, donated, unwanted materials to make cloth bags that we can then give to the public to re use, give away, bring back, share with friends, however they want. They are to use instead of the single use plastic bags in the shops.
We only started 3 weeks ago and we already have over 60 members in the group. We just had our first sewing bee and it was amazing. 16 people turned up with fabric, threads, sewing machines, overlockers. No age limit, no skills required. There is always ironing, cutting and it’s a great environment to learn. We had a man turn up which was fantastic and we would love to see more men come on board. Sewing is for everyone. It’s not just about the bags, it’s about getting together with your community for a common cause and looking at waste reduction and sustainability. We had such a great time, the social side is wonderful. Most of us didn’t know each other but we at least had one thing in common and that’s our hatred of single use plastic bags.
We have a goal to make 500 bags and we will do a launch. We have support from council. We will then approach businesses, Lismore Shopping Square, Centro and get the bags out there. They will be put in boxes, well sign posted with all the info about Boomerang Bags and they will be free to take. I have this feeling already that this will be huge. People are excited and talking about it. It’s already growing and growing and I think that’s what I love about Lismore. We have this community where everyone gets in together. It doesn’t matter where you are from you are accepted. There are so many different cultures, different walks of life. Doesn’t matter what you wear, what you do or whatever. It’s such a beautiful community and also an environmentally conscious community. We have a progressive council. As a teacher and a parent I would love to get this into more schools. I know kids enjoy doing it too. They are the future, they’re the ones that are basically going to be looking after the mess that’s already been created.”