Lorraine Vass has experienced a richly varied and interesting working life as a librarian, and even more eventful and fulfilling years of “retirement” as an advocate for koala conservation and preservation. She made time this week to speak to Darlene Cook about her life’s journey.

I was born a “war baby” in 1944, the eldest of three girls. There’s only 32 months between us.  

Growing up, I realised that I was very fortunate that my father worked in a protected industry, at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation in Fisherman’s Bend in Melbourne, and hence did not serve in the military during WW2. Interestingly, my husband Rick’s father didn’t go to war either; he was in the wool industry, and that was also protected. 

My maiden name was Leunig, and people have asked me many times over the years whether my family is related to the cartoonist Michael Leunig. He’s actually a very distant relative; only one family of Leunigs settled in Australia, originally in South Australia. Some stayed there, others moved to Western Australia and to Victoria. When my mother was widowed, she was the only ML Leunig in the Melbourne phone book and was forever getting phone calls for either Michael or Mary. It drove her crazy!

I was brought up in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, attending South Caulfield Training School (meaning student teachers did their practicums there), going on to Gardenvale Central School and then a selective girls' school, MacRobertson Girls' High School. I matriculated in 1961 and was accepted by Monash Uni, which opened in 1962.

(MacRobertson Girls' High School in 1958. Lorraine is 2nd from the left in the 2nd back row)

I chose instead to train as a librarian at the State Library of Victoria. I’d known I wanted to be a librarian since 4th Grade. I completed the first section, known as the Preliminary Certificate and then decided to have some time out. While I was studying, I was working as a library assistant at the Moorabbin Free Library in Bentleigh.

Indeed, that’s where I met Rick, who at the time worked in the Bentleigh Branch of United Insurance, just around the corner from the library. I think he came in for a book on letter writing, and one thing led to another. Being on library desk is a great way to meet people. 

We married in late July 1966, sailing to the UK 8 days later on a Greek ‘migrant ship’, RHMS Ellinis. Post-war immigration was still in full swing – migrants in; young Aussies out - let loose to explore the world! The voyage from Melbourne to Southampton took 5 weeks with stops in Sydney, Wellington, Papeete, Panama City, and Curacao in the Caribbean.

(Lorraine and Rick in Tahiti in 1966)

I worked at the Institute of Education libraries at the University of London as a library assistant, and Rick worked for an insurance broker in the City. In mid-1967, we bought an old Kombi and started planning our first travels into Europe and North Africa. We were away for about 5 months. On our return to London, we both more or less picked up where we had left off. The Institute, in particular, was very accommodating to us colonials.

London was an eye-opener. Apart from anything else, it was only 20 years after the war and in many ways still recovering – vacant blocks from the bombing; constant visual reminiscences of the war. My first job at the Institute was running a clearing house for literature on community development. It and the main library were still housed in a Nissan hut! 

I love seeing photos of European cities today, all clean and spruced up. So many, when we saw them, were dark, run down and somewhat grimy, suffering from the austerity of post-war years. The old buildings were magnificent, but the war had taken its toll, and those places hadn’t had the time to recover.  

We spent 3½ years in the UK, North Africa and Europe and then a further 8 months driving home. We weren’t hippies, even though our itineraries covered many of the same places as those who travelled “the hippy trail”. 

(January 1968 at the Camel Market in Goulimine, something of a desert outpost in the south of Morocco, known for its market and the nomadic Berbers (Blue Men) who trade their camels)

The Institute was extremely cosmopolitan, and when we decided to drive home overland (nothing was impossible for us), I was showered with the contact details of people to look up along the way. We started off in Scandinavia, then the parts of Central Europe outside the Eastern Bloc, and on to Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Malaysia, and finally to Singapore. It had been an exhilarating but tiring journey, punctuated by poste restante and bank draft dramas (no credit cards in those days), engine problems and the most delightful hospitality.

We had booked our passage on the MV Centaur from Singapore to Fremantle before leaving London, as it accommodated both passengers and cargo. The idea was that after a short stay in Perth, we would drive home to Melbourne, but the engine blew up about 100 kms out of Perth. We were towed back, staying with some English boys we had met months before, to earn money to fix the car. 

But at the same time, my poor, not-so-old Dad had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital. Mum sent the police looking for us around Ceduna, where she expected us to be, but of course, we were back in Perth. We were eventually found and flew back to Melbourne in time to see Dad in Prince Henry Hospital before he died.

We lived with Mum for nearly a year while we adjusted to being back in Australia. I had joined the Education Department of Victoria, completed my library qualification and an 8-week teacher training course, becoming a teacher-librarian in the Department’s Technical Division. By that time, late 1970, Rick and I bought our first home – a 16½ foot wide terrace, in West Melbourne.

I enjoyed my work and building, somewhat haphazardly, a career in librarianship. Having started in public libraries, then an academic library in the UK,  four years in school librarianship was an interesting and useful foray. From there, I went to the Giblin Library which served the Faculty of Economics at the University of Melbourne as Acting Librarian and then to the Footscray Institute of Technology as a Reference Librarian.  When we decided to come up here to the North Coast, I went back into public libraries. 

My youngest sister, Jenn, had come up for the Aquarius festival in 1973 and stayed on in the Tweed Valley. She and Mum bought the general store at Kunghur, past Uki on the Murwillumbah to Kyogle Road, a few miles before the turnoff to Nimbin.

We spent our 1973-74 summer holidays with them in Kunghur, exploring the area. Rick drove the car back to Melbourne in early January, but I was on school holidays so stayed longer, catching the train from Murwillumbah to Melbourne at the end of January, not long before the big 1974 flood. 

We were enjoying Melbourne, but also quite intrigued about this beautiful and interesting part of the world. Over time, we discussed the pros and cons of moving (we were still renovating the 1883 terrace). Change was in the air, and we eventually agreed whoever got the first job offer, the other would follow. 

Rick won! A vacancy came up at the Coffs Harbour branch of the insurance company he was working for. He moved up; I finished the term at FIT, packed up the house and rented it out.

We arrived in Coffs in 1976 and stayed until 1985. It took me a while to find work, and when I did, it was as a casual, contracted cataloguer with the Clarence Regional Library in Grafton. I commuted for about four months in early 1977 when the position of Branch Librarian at Coffs Harbour was advertised. Coffs was growing, and the position had been upgraded. I applied and was successful.

(1978, when Lorraine was a Coffs Harbour Branch Librarian, promoting the introduction into the Clarence Regional Library of Heara Books for the visually impaired)  

It was an amazing time to be working in Coffs. The town was on the move, open to new ideas and services. The library was well patronised and we were supported generously in the local media. I even had a spot on the locally-produced Get Set – the Wayne Magee Show on 11-8 Television to promote what was going on in the library. We made a 7-minute doco titled Wayne goes to the library, which won a national libraries public relations award in 1979.

I was involved in numerous organisations in Coffs, two of the most enjoyable being the Neighbourhood Centre and the Arts Council. A very personal achievement was helping to bring the Sydney Film Festival’s Travelling Film Festival to the Sawtell picture theatre. Lismore was the closest location for the TFF at the time. 

Rick and I had built a house at North Sapphire, looking out over the South Solitaries. We had a boat too, as Rick loved sailing, and we were getting back to some overseas travel. Then, in early 1983, I was appointed Clarence Regional Librarian. The upside was the wider regional canvas, managing branches as far south as Macksville up to Iluka in the north.

There was also the development of the Northern NSW Libraries Federation, a consortium comprising the Richmond-Tweed, Clarence and Namoi regional libraries and the Northern Rivers CAE library, formed to introduce a single catalogue for those libraries, thus facilitating inter-library lending across north-eastern NSW.  Exciting stuff at the time, although looking back, incredibly clumsy, moving first to microfiche and then to a primitive computerisation system.  

While I enjoyed the position’s challenges, the resumption of commuting to Grafton was a trial, and I only stuck it out for a couple of years. We had both been visiting Sydney for work-related purposes; occasionally together, and we enjoyed it. So different to Melbourne. We started talking about returning to city life.    

A friend lived in Lane Cove, so we sort of knew that lower north shore area and when the Council advertised for a Chief Librarian and Information Co-ordinator, I applied.  We lived in a flat until we decided to sell the Sapphire house and buy in Greenwich. The house was a box on steel legs: a Lendlease Beachcomber, Mark II, I think, sited on a battle axe block.  No views at all, but interesting. Today, Beachcombers enjoy something of a cult status.

Moving to a well-resourced metropolitan library service valued by councillors and residents was a huge change. The Shorelink Libraries Network, which linked the libraries of Lane Cove, Willoughby, North Sydney, Mosman and Manly, was the largest public library network in NSW at the time, providing over 100 terminals to its online public access catalogue. The single catalogue and the libraries’ close proximity to each other meant that a Shorelink user had ready access to 600,000 books and other items. 

But living in Sydney was different to visiting Sydney, and the novelty didn’t take long to wear off. In 1989, I went to a library conference in Darwin, which had an exotic appeal. Rick wasn’t too surprised when, a few weeks later, I clipped an ad for a position with the Northern Territory Library Service. I was interviewed by phone - my first ever telephone interview, and it went well.

So, we packed up yet again for another move, thankfully paid for by the Territory government. 

We spent 10 years in Darwin and really loved it. My job as User Services Librarian was to manage the development of the Territory’s public libraries, school libraries and community libraries, the latter being joint-use facilities usually in remote areas, often in Aboriginal communities, serving schools and the public. 

The Northern Territory Library Service was established in 1980. It was new and innovative, and when I arrived, sat in the Department of Education. Service provision to remote communities was a particular focus, hence the joint-use model supported by the schools’ staffing establishments, including a teacher-librarian capable of training Aboriginal assistants. 

(Lorraine's permit to work in Aboriginal areas. Libraries sat within the Department of Education when she was appointed in 1989, but moved to the Department of Housing & Local Government in 1992, necessitating new permits.

The first of these libraries had opened in Barunga in 1982 and more quickly followed. The system worked well however through the 1990s teacher-librarians lost their establishment status and sustaining the model became more challenging. Government services generally were being cut back then.

It had taken Rick a while to find work in Darwin, and when he did, it was in tourism, tour-guiding. Eventually, we established a small tour business operating across the Top End.  

We were interested in Aboriginal culture, including rock art and managed to explore a lot of it in the NT and the Kimberley. Rick’s tour-guiding was a bonus. If I went out to communities, it was work and not much else; fly in, fly out. Light planes were the way you went. You might drive to Katherine in a government car, but everywhere else you flew. Rick’s tours were by road vehicle, although sometimes his clients might have arranged to fly back to Darwin, in which case I’d catch the flight out so we’d have some time together and then drive back together. 

We found the Territory’s climate difficult; enervating humidity with not much difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures for a lot of the year. While public buildings were air-conditioned, we mostly relied on overhead fans at home. We’d bought an old, flimsy ‘Government Grey’ which was probably built in the mid-‘60s and actually survived Cyclone Tracy. Elevated, it sat on concrete piers with banks of full-height louvres and fibro wall cladding – not the most elegant of the many types of housing characteristic of old Darwin, but we did it up, adding a couple of Troppo verandas and installing an air-conditioner in the bedroom. 

Finally, retirement, in fact, early retirement, courtesy of selling the Greenwich Beachcomber. My sister, Jenn, was now living in Lismore, which became our destination for sussing out our next move. We’d thought the Byron hinterland but quickly realised we wouldn’t have much to live on, so we started looking around Lismore.

Before long, we found our ideal - a spacious house on three nicely treed acres at Wyrallah on Tregeagle Road. The previous owner told us about the koalas that had been moving through the property in recent years (he had planted koala trees 10 years before) and mentioned a mob in town called Friends of the Koala (FOK), who were the people to see about koalas and local wildlife.

We moved in the week before Christmas 1999, surrounded by boxes and furniture that had been in storage on the Gold Coast. All of that was overshadowed by the news that I had won two tickets to the Sunrise Breakfast by the Lighthouse at Cape Byron, where we saw in the new millennium. Life in Lismore had started off on a great note! 

Once settled, I looked around for voluntary work (Rick had joined the Golf Club) and found it at the Lismore Regional Art Gallery, working first with Director, Irena Dobrijevich, as her PA. I enjoyed learning how an art gallery actually worked and meeting the gallery cohort. The Trench Building was clearly not fit for purpose, and the push was on for more space, even back then.

I forget how long I actually volunteered at the Gallery, but I know I continued to have some involvement up to when Steve Alderton came on board as Director in 2005. The change in focus was down to koalas and Friends of the Koala. 

We had joined FOK back in early 2000, receiving a welcoming handwritten letter from Secretary John Hyde. At that time, their AGM was held in April or May, and we decided to attend. Hilariously, we were the only strangers in the room. 

The group loved Rick because he was a big, strong outdoorsy man who would make a great rescuer. They suggested I might like to shadow a carer at the Care Centre in preparation for taking on a shift or two. Rick quickly picked up rescuing and became interested in learning to care for joeys. He joined the Committee almost straight away. 

I wasn’t all that keen on becoming a carer; however, the newsletter had fallen into a bit of a hole, so I offered to help out and started attending Committee meetings, which were held in the early evening. The President, Geoff Tompkin, was finding it hard to attend meetings due to work commitments as a veterinarian, so after a while, I asked if he would object if I stood for President. He responded positively, and so I stood at the 2002 AGM and was elected, remaining President for 15 years. 

(Lorraine addressing a rally in March 2014 held outside Don Page's office in Ballina, objecting to the preferred route of section 10 of the Pacific Highway upgrade - the Save Ballina's Koalas campaign.)

In FOK’s early days, there had been several chapters throughout the region, but by the time we arrived, the active membership had shrunk somewhat. I think building the Care Centre in Rifle Range Road and changing from home-care to a more centralised care model had exhausted the founding committee, and the organisation was in a bit of a lull.  

There were plenty of issues needing attention. The realignment of Skyline Road through primary koala habitat was a big one, as was Lismore Council’s tedious grappling with drafting a Comprehensive Koala Plan of Management (CKPoM). But apart from the advocacy, there was the need to recruit and train the rescuers, carers, leaf collectors, and everyone else needed to deal with our licensed work for the NSW Government, which was to rescue, care and release, where possible, injured, sick and orphaned koalas back into the wild. We also needed a bit of organisational capacity-building.  

FOK has certainly grown and expanded on the original founders’ vision and keeps on evolving. It’s a very different organisation today compared with what it was when I stepped down as President in 2017. FOK now operates a respected hospital and is a valued research partner. It has several salaried positions and a dynamic social media presence with worldwide reach.

In my day, we were all volunteers seeking ways to add value to our work, developing a steady income stream, engaging the broader public and being a strong regional voice for koala recovery. We had a lot of help from the links we forged with the local media: print, radio and TV. Our location close to Southern Cross Uni was also helpful, leading to several useful collaborations over the years. 

In the very early days, building networks was crucial. Logically, we thought Sydney’s universities were a good starting point, but in the end, Queensland’s universities and their researchers were more helpful to us. For example, FOK is a foundation partner in the development of the chlamydia vaccine, which has recently been approved for use by the regulator. It’s been a long road - we started talking to Prof. Timms in 2005. 

We were also fortunate that the Environmental Defenders Office opened its only regional branch in Lismore in conjunction with the Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre. Having accessible, professional legal advice was priceless, and we learned a lot about planning and environmental law as well as evidence-based submission writing.  

In my view, the one thing that has really reinforced FOK’s regional presence has been the opportunity to work with the four of our local Councils, which have developed and implemented CKPoMs over the past 15 years. FOK is a community-based organisation. While it rightly views itself as a regional organisation, stretching from the Queensland border southwards almost to Iluka and westward beyond the Clarence, working with Lismore, Tweed, Byron and Ballina councils on their Plans has given the organisation credibility in all levels of government that it is a legitimate partner in landscape-scale koala recovery and conservation across the Northern Rivers. This, in turn, has led to considerable government investment over the years and a healthy appetite for on-ground and research collaboration across the region.

My volunteering in FOK has served me well. Sure, it was a 24-hour commitment for years on end, but it gave me incredible satisfaction and the opportunity to meet and work with so many amazing people. What’s more, it has broadened my horizons, and I continue learning so much. It’s also rewarded me. In 2018, the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia, now known as the Australian Wildlife Society, awarded me the prestigious Serventy Conservation Award. Its purpose is to recognise and celebrate conservation work that has not been done as part of a professional paid career. FOK has a long relationship with the Society, having won the Award’s organisational category in 2007. I was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2021 Australia Day Honours List for significant service to wildlife conservation, particularly of the koala. I’ve received several local awards as well. 

(Lorraine was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2021 Australia Day honours for her significant service to wildlife conservation, particularly of the koala.)

Koala survival is still in the balance. More than ever, koala conservation remains highly political because in so much of the koala’s remaining range, we humans are competing for space, and there is little political will to strengthen protection laws. The impacts of climate change on the species are already becoming apparent. 

Even the welcome announcement this month on the Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast has its limitations. We celebrate the immediate moratorium on logging – it’s a win, but ponder the uncertainty of a gazettal date. Ashley Love, who worked in National Parks, had the vision back in 2012, and its creation has been Labor policy since 2015. Still, these things take so long to be legislated.

We understand there’s a timber industry and workers who need to be looked out for, but there have been opportunities for decades for timber companies to invest in plantations to sustain them into the future. The investment just hasn’t been viable or extensive. Besides, in Western Victoria, timber plantations were planted with species that koalas love. They are the only habitat outside of national parks, and koalas have colonised them. 25-30 years later, growers want to harvest trees and koalas are being maimed and killed in the process. 

There are no easy answers, and the campaigning must continue. Our local koalas also need safeguarding, and one of the ways this can be achieved is for the State forests in the southern Richmond River valley and along the Richmond Range to be part of a new national park proposal, the Richmond River Koala Parks. 

What’s in the future? Sadly, or thankfully, the passion doesn’t disappear. While I stepped down as FOK Patron and from the Northern Rivers Wildlife Hospital Board nearly 12 months ago, I still represent FOK on the Tweed Coast Koala Advisory Committee reviewing their CKPOM and on the NSW Wildlife Council. There are a few other things as well. The difference these days is I can pick and choose. 

Rick and I moved into town in late 2021, a few months before the floods. We’ve settled in well, even though Lismore isn’t the same now as it was when we arrived a quarter of a century ago.  Now, a few interests and activities have disappeared. Take Musica Viva - that’s vanished. Lismore used to be on the TFF circuit – that’s gone. The SCU presence seems to have diminished - events and speakers I remember from years ago, no longer. That’s not to say that town isn’t trying; maybe it’s a generational thing. 

We haven’t travelled overseas since before COVID and we’re not likely to due to Rick’s health. While there’s plenty of scope for inbound travel, doing it is another thing. Rick doesn’t like to plan too far into the future. 

We certainly don’t want to move again. Where we are adjoins a small forested reserve which gives us a feeling of privacy, space and above all, nature. The odd wallaby hops through, which we didn’t see much of at Wyrallah. Birds galore, reptiles, possums, echidnas, you name it. We saw a few koalas soon after we moved in, but not recently. We’re slowly working on the front and back gardens, and we have lovely neighbours. We’re happy here. That’s enough.