Dear Aunty Carol,

It’s been ages since I last sent a letter and I thought it would be nice to let you know what I’ve been up to with the Peel-Harvey Catchment Council since I started there two years ago.

The team here are really friendly and welcomed me from the first day I started – and boy what a team. There’s a mix of doctors, scientists, people from local government backgrounds and a few of them have even been in the landcare/environmental sector for more than 20years! So much knowledge about local projects, they have been a real help answering my questions and coming out onto farms with me.

The farm trips are great – I am lucky to meet a new farmer almost every week – and they are just so passionate about their land and their family’s work at each property. Every one of them is keen to do something for the environment like fencing bushland, planting trees, stopping erosion or improving their animal management. Its such a pleasure to work with so many likeminded people.

Sometimes when I’m walking in one of their bushland reserves, I’m reminded of our old scout bushwalks when we would just enjoy the quiet, listening to birds singing and wondering about all the different plants and animals. Except now of course, I can use all the stuff I learnt at uni and from people I’ve met through the years to help them understand how amazing and diverse the bush is, and why its work protecting. And the best thing is, with the project I’m running (called Greening Farms) I can often support them to protect their bushland with some money to help buy fencing and keep their stock from grazing and trampling the bush.

I’ve also really enjoyed organising a bunch of farmer workshops in and around the Dryandra and Mandurah communities, helping to share knowledge about tree planting, fencing and making hay (there’s plenty of sunshine at the moment, so yes, lots of farmers are making hay while the sun shines! Lol). I love the personal interactions with the farmers, being part of a community and really seeing things change on their farms once they have additional support to do what they want to do.

It’s like the farmers want to do the things we are talking about with them, but without the extra enthusiasm and funding, they are so focused on the business of farming that they struggle to allocate time to look after other parts of their land. But that’s where I come in – and I can see they really appreciate and enjoy the work I’m doing with them.

And boy have we achieved some great results! Even though I’ve only been working on the last half of the Greening Farms project, in total we have managed to improve more than 1,300 hectares of farm land, provide 63km of fencing for bushland, run 14 workshops with over 400 farmers and believe it or not, share the story of what we’ve done with more than 40,000 people just this last year.

I feel like the work I’m doing here is really important; protecting biodiversity on farms and helping farmers to be productive is so essential for the future, particularly with all this Climate Change stuff we are all hearing about.

And I love that I’ve been able to do this kind of thing as a career for the last 20 years or so.

I’ll never forget speaking to grandad just after I finished Uni waaaay back in 2002; he said ‘ Go out there and enjoy working in the country for something you believe in Michael – you’ll never look back.” And you know what, he was so right!

I can’t wait to catch up for Christmas again at our spot on the river and tell you more about what’s been happening.

Hope you and the family are doing great!

Lots of love from down here in Mandurah,

Michael/Mick

We acknowledge the Noongar people as Traditional Custodians of this land and pay our respects to all Elders past and present