“ We had 2 beautiful boys, James and Nicholas. They grew up here. They went to Larnook School which was and is a beautiful country school with 20 kids. They used to come home and I’d say, Who did you play with today? They’d say, everyone Mum. They just ran around in a pack, just the way kids should. They were treated with a lot of respect so they came into the high school situation confident. They went to Richmond River High. James is now 25 and Nicholas is 22.
We bought a house in town in South Lismore which was easy for work. I’d push the pram into town. It was good living down on the flood plain …nice and flat. Till it rains (laughs).
I heard about the flood levy they wanted to build. I’d done all the hydrology at Uni and thought, surely we should be planting out the catchment and holding that water back. Planting up the river bank so not so much water would come down. I knew that you could reduce flood level velocities with vegetation. That’s well documented.
I found out who The Greens were and joined them. I went to a meeting about the flood levy and I had all the environmental impact assessment documents with me. It was run by Council. I was struggling in the room. I had one of my babies under the desk eating a bikkie, the doors swung open and this couple strode in. She had a baby on her hip and had obviously just been breastfeeding. Literally that day I found my family. Today they are a part of Wilsons River Landcare Group and I joined Landcare. I feel like I belong to this area now and Landcare is still a huge part of my life.
We spend a lot of time on the riverbanks of Lismore. We started over at Pritchard Park, all around the Greyhound track, over Symes Bridge as well. Also right along the river banks. We all volunteer and we spend a lot of time applying for funding and getting approvals. The Landcare group started in ’93 but I joined in ’99 so have been planting trees all those years. We’ve created rainforest in the CBD if you look along Molesworth St down past the Lismore Clinic. When we first moved into Pritchard Park it was all Camphor Laurel with a Privet understory. We were able to get a Green Corps team to help us and we have nearly 200 species growing there now that we know existed when the Cedar Cutters first came up our river. When they came up back then you could see all the way to the bottom, that’s how clear the water was and the trees were so big either side of the bank that the branches met in the middle of the river and you couldn’t see the sky. How great would it be to re-create that! We have this vision that we want to achieve that. The cutters started coming up in 1845. That’s part of our history and it’s good to acknowledge that.
What Landcare is about for me is you are demonstrating a positive way forward and making change. It’s not like there’s no point. There is a point. Every weekend with our babies who are now adults we were there planting trees, weeding, preparing the site and proving that we can make change with our own hands. Two to five years after every planting we are still there every weekend watering, weeding and making sure they survive. We love it.
I bought a modest, little house in Lismore Heights with a great view and the relationship with the father broke down after about 9 years. He lives in Yamba now and is married. I was a single parent then for quite a while and I loved it. The boys would stay with their dad every second weekend so I had some free time to party. I had great friends and camping was a great part of our lives. The kids loved it and I am really pleased I was able to provide our children with those outdoor experiences that I had as a child. Nature is so important to kids. That stillness sitting around a fire is so important. You don’t get that at home with all the devices around us.
I got a job with an organisation called Conservation Volunteers Australia and I loved it so John did a bit more with the looking after little kids. We had teams from Tweed to Grafton and my role was to identify projects working with Landcare Groups or Councils and then to recruit the teams. It was a fabulous job. I also wrote a lot of stories and got a bit of a media profile which helped when I ran for Council.
I first ran in ’99 but I wasn’t elected. I had come to every Council meeting for 4 years and listened. I started reading the business papers found out who the staff were, who the Councillors were and I was on 2 committees so I felt really informed. I remember Jenny Dowell and I were both elected that first term together. That’s been another whole lifestyle which fitted quite well with being a single parent.
We had a very modest lifestyle. I drove an old Kingswood that I paid $2,000 for. Camping was our entertainment. My boys went to Uni here. My son was interested in Law. Turns up and there’s 200 students doing his course only 15 on campus and the rest external. The 15 were all mature age women so they both moved to Melbourne and went to Uni there. My kids left home a few years ago which is completely devastating for a single mum. I was ready and then it hit me really hard. After 20 years of parenting I thought, what will I do for the next 20 years? I found that really hard. I realised I had to reinvent myself. That’s when I started learning Auslan. I enrolled in Tafe to learn Auslan and by then I had a teaching qualification that I’d got at SCU. I did High School teaching out at Casino and that got me through that feeling. I’m hanging out for grandchildren. (laughs)
Isaac Smith had a lot of things happening in his life. Neil was acting in the role of Mayor and resigned in January. I was in Melbourne visiting my sons when I heard this and they said you should have a go at this Mum. We had just assumed that when he resigned the Deputy would fill the role till the September election but we were told by the department that we needed to have an elected Mayor. The 5 of us put our hands up and I was supported by some colleagues and was voted in. It was a very Wow moment for me. It was pretty traumatic too as we parted ways with our General Manager that same night so that was a really tough night. I had a couple of hours sleep and had to face the media the next morning. They didn’t want to talk about me being Mayor, they all wanted to talk about the GM. Since then we now have a great GM who is very focussed.
I’m really loving the role and enjoying the social interaction with people. I’m going to Rotary and Lions, seeing people in the community with their problems. I love Lismore. This is the first place I felt like… I belong to this place, a feeling of family and a feeling of a role to play here like planting the trees. I love the river, the art, the theatre, the hills, the farms and the community. I really feel our future is the farmlands. We’ve got the water, we’ve got the soil and we just need to stop our soil washing down the river to Ballina. We need to finish planting out the river banks. I love the markets and how you go and chat to the people with all the fresh produce. I also love Bats. I had a Mango tree outside my window in Brisbane and I’ve always loved them. The thing I loved about the Lantern Parade is they gave us a boat to decorate for our Landcare group[ and we decided that we would do bats. They are the major pollinators for rainforest species. A lot of the rainforest trees flower at night when the bats are out. If it wasn’t for the bats, rainforest wouldn’t be pollinated. That’s how important they are. They are our totem for our Landcare group.
I’ve been doing radio at River FM now for 15 years. I do it because I have all this vinyl. I’ve always loved radio and here I am still dragging 20 kilo of records into the studio. Farming and food is one of the things I love about this area. I like the idea of small farming. It’s so fertile and rich, we have our big scrub remnants, our waterfalls and the beach is not too far at all and beautiful people. I love that wherever I go here it’s a totally different scene.”
We bought a house in town in South Lismore which was easy for work. I’d push the pram into town. It was good living down on the flood plain …nice and flat. Till it rains (laughs).
I heard about the flood levy they wanted to build. I’d done all the hydrology at Uni and thought, surely we should be planting out the catchment and holding that water back. Planting up the river bank so not so much water would come down. I knew that you could reduce flood level velocities with vegetation. That’s well documented.
I found out who The Greens were and joined them. I went to a meeting about the flood levy and I had all the environmental impact assessment documents with me. It was run by Council. I was struggling in the room. I had one of my babies under the desk eating a bikkie, the doors swung open and this couple strode in. She had a baby on her hip and had obviously just been breastfeeding. Literally that day I found my family. Today they are a part of Wilsons River Landcare Group and I joined Landcare. I feel like I belong to this area now and Landcare is still a huge part of my life.
We spend a lot of time on the riverbanks of Lismore. We started over at Pritchard Park, all around the Greyhound track, over Symes Bridge as well. Also right along the river banks. We all volunteer and we spend a lot of time applying for funding and getting approvals. The Landcare group started in ’93 but I joined in ’99 so have been planting trees all those years. We’ve created rainforest in the CBD if you look along Molesworth St down past the Lismore Clinic. When we first moved into Pritchard Park it was all Camphor Laurel with a Privet understory. We were able to get a Green Corps team to help us and we have nearly 200 species growing there now that we know existed when the Cedar Cutters first came up our river. When they came up back then you could see all the way to the bottom, that’s how clear the water was and the trees were so big either side of the bank that the branches met in the middle of the river and you couldn’t see the sky. How great would it be to re-create that! We have this vision that we want to achieve that. The cutters started coming up in 1845. That’s part of our history and it’s good to acknowledge that.
What Landcare is about for me is you are demonstrating a positive way forward and making change. It’s not like there’s no point. There is a point. Every weekend with our babies who are now adults we were there planting trees, weeding, preparing the site and proving that we can make change with our own hands. Two to five years after every planting we are still there every weekend watering, weeding and making sure they survive. We love it.
I bought a modest, little house in Lismore Heights with a great view and the relationship with the father broke down after about 9 years. He lives in Yamba now and is married. I was a single parent then for quite a while and I loved it. The boys would stay with their dad every second weekend so I had some free time to party. I had great friends and camping was a great part of our lives. The kids loved it and I am really pleased I was able to provide our children with those outdoor experiences that I had as a child. Nature is so important to kids. That stillness sitting around a fire is so important. You don’t get that at home with all the devices around us.
I got a job with an organisation called Conservation Volunteers Australia and I loved it so John did a bit more with the looking after little kids. We had teams from Tweed to Grafton and my role was to identify projects working with Landcare Groups or Councils and then to recruit the teams. It was a fabulous job. I also wrote a lot of stories and got a bit of a media profile which helped when I ran for Council.
I first ran in ’99 but I wasn’t elected. I had come to every Council meeting for 4 years and listened. I started reading the business papers found out who the staff were, who the Councillors were and I was on 2 committees so I felt really informed. I remember Jenny Dowell and I were both elected that first term together. That’s been another whole lifestyle which fitted quite well with being a single parent.
We had a very modest lifestyle. I drove an old Kingswood that I paid $2,000 for. Camping was our entertainment. My boys went to Uni here. My son was interested in Law. Turns up and there’s 200 students doing his course only 15 on campus and the rest external. The 15 were all mature age women so they both moved to Melbourne and went to Uni there. My kids left home a few years ago which is completely devastating for a single mum. I was ready and then it hit me really hard. After 20 years of parenting I thought, what will I do for the next 20 years? I found that really hard. I realised I had to reinvent myself. That’s when I started learning Auslan. I enrolled in Tafe to learn Auslan and by then I had a teaching qualification that I’d got at SCU. I did High School teaching out at Casino and that got me through that feeling. I’m hanging out for grandchildren. (laughs)
Isaac Smith had a lot of things happening in his life. Neil was acting in the role of Mayor and resigned in January. I was in Melbourne visiting my sons when I heard this and they said you should have a go at this Mum. We had just assumed that when he resigned the Deputy would fill the role till the September election but we were told by the department that we needed to have an elected Mayor. The 5 of us put our hands up and I was supported by some colleagues and was voted in. It was a very Wow moment for me. It was pretty traumatic too as we parted ways with our General Manager that same night so that was a really tough night. I had a couple of hours sleep and had to face the media the next morning. They didn’t want to talk about me being Mayor, they all wanted to talk about the GM. Since then we now have a great GM who is very focussed.
I’m really loving the role and enjoying the social interaction with people. I’m going to Rotary and Lions, seeing people in the community with their problems. I love Lismore. This is the first place I felt like… I belong to this place, a feeling of family and a feeling of a role to play here like planting the trees. I love the river, the art, the theatre, the hills, the farms and the community. I really feel our future is the farmlands. We’ve got the water, we’ve got the soil and we just need to stop our soil washing down the river to Ballina. We need to finish planting out the river banks. I love the markets and how you go and chat to the people with all the fresh produce. I also love Bats. I had a Mango tree outside my window in Brisbane and I’ve always loved them. The thing I loved about the Lantern Parade is they gave us a boat to decorate for our Landcare group[ and we decided that we would do bats. They are the major pollinators for rainforest species. A lot of the rainforest trees flower at night when the bats are out. If it wasn’t for the bats, rainforest wouldn’t be pollinated. That’s how important they are. They are our totem for our Landcare group.
I’ve been doing radio at River FM now for 15 years. I do it because I have all this vinyl. I’ve always loved radio and here I am still dragging 20 kilo of records into the studio. Farming and food is one of the things I love about this area. I like the idea of small farming. It’s so fertile and rich, we have our big scrub remnants, our waterfalls and the beach is not too far at all and beautiful people. I love that wherever I go here it’s a totally different scene.”