Once the mayor of Lismore and an academic at Southern Cross University, Ros Irwin now spends her time doing everything she can to help our endangered koala population with Friends of the Koala. With her partner Bill Shaeffe, they have transformed their property into a koala sanctuary, under a perpetual conservation agreement. Her mission now is to create a better future for koalas.Walking through the Friends of the Koala (FoK) Care Centre and koala tree nursery on Rifle Range Road in Lismore, FoK president Ros Irwin shows her obvious passion for koalas.At a large wire net enclosure, she points to a large koala who is making a loud grunting noise (like a pig), while hiding inside a clump of eucalyptus branches.“That’s Triumph, when he makes that noise it means he’s a randy boy,” she said.Nearby, another koala called Marley is the oldest koala FoK has in care. “We had to get a tree climber to rescue him,” Ros said.In another caged enclosure, signs on the door pronounce the koalas inside are Lauren, Charlotte and Sweetie.“Sweetie can’t be released due to state government law that a sterile koala can’t be released into the wild,” Ros said. “It’s a shame because she could be looking after the young koalas.“Lauren has retrovirus and her kidneys packed it in. It could be the end of her soon.”Ros Irwin has spent her life helping people, and now she devotes her time to helping our endangered koala populations. Over the last three years, FoK has rescued 438, 369 and then 394 koalas per year.“50% of the koalas rescued in NSW are rescued by Friends of the Koala,” Ros said. Big job“FoK takes my time and my concern. “It’s a huge undertaking and I’m not sure where we are going if we can’t meet the ongoing costs of running the care centre.”These days, Ros spends her time writing grant submissions, annual reports and newsletters, and is on the regional koala conservation committee.“I spend a lot of time educating people about what a healthy koala is, especially kids in schools,” she said.“If we can teach kids about koalas at a young age, we know they will tell their parents to slow down when they see koala signs on the road.Friends of the Koala care centre koala tree nursery.Tough game“It’s a tough game to be in when you look at the koala statistics.“It’s financially difficult and it keeps me awake at night.“In Port Stevens and Gunnedah, there are no koalas left – and Kyogle council still need to identify how many koalas they have in their area. We rescued 27 koalas there last year and they were mostly euthanised as sick animals.”Funding Recently, FoK received a $56K community projects grant to construct 3.5m fence to make an enclosure at the care centre into a koala kindergarden - and Ros wrote the successful project application.Ros is also working on the Hinterland Project, where Ballina Byron, Tweed and Lismore councils work together and give FoK $15K a year for three years to pay for a vet and vet nurse.FoK also received $50K from National Parks and Wildlife for rescue equipment. But Ros said the problem is lack of funding for long term maintenance.“Lismore Council doesn’t fund us, except for $2000 a year to take dead koalas to the tip,” Ros said.“We rely on donations - a big donation funded our new office and public education centre and a vet building, but we need sponsorship.“We are running a volunteer organisation, but have to pay staff too and we’re not funded for ongoing running costs.”Volunteer jobsRos has the president of FoK for two years and has spent five years on the committee.“We have our annual general meeting on October 24,” she said.“We desperately need a treasurer - a retired auditor or an accountant would be good. We need a vice president too.“Most people want to do practical jobs like collect leaves for the koalas every day, and we are always looking for help - especially on the committee.”Ros and Bill looking at the collected leaves for feeding koalas.Ros and BillRos and her partner Bill Shaeffe have been together for 13 years have a koala kindie at their 4.65 hectare property in Caniaba.It’s an animal sanctuary with a conservation listing in perpetuity, making it land for wildlife, protected under State Government legislation.“We can’t look after it forever and we want to make sure it will always be there for koalas,” Ros said.“We spent five years every Sunday clearing weeds from gullies and now have the Bush Connect program helping with rainforest regeneration.“We’ve rehabilitated three different types of rainforest and we’ve seen koalas using the rainforest too. Its cool in hot weather for them.“We soft release them there first into big trees so they can build up their muscle tone and later we’ll release them close to the place they were taken from.”Ros and Bill are also staffing the FoK rescue phone one day a week.“We are also rescuers and we might get called to a rescue at 1am,” she said.“I picked up a burnt koala from Drake after bushfires. It had blood in its kidneys and was put down.“It’s a huge responsibility and you learn a lot about koalas. It’s a 100% full time job. “Bill and I laugh – there’s no retirement for us.“Our passion originated when Bill picked up a big male koala hit by a car. “When he was brought to the care centre, we tipped the cage a little so we could slide him out and he screamed. Every bone in his body was broken.“When koalas are first hit, the adrenaline kicks in and they race up a tree.“So when we go to collect them, we need to put a trap around the tree to stop them jumping into other trees.“They are not stupid animals – they don’t actually sleep 24/7. They rest for about 18 hours. “If you are under their tree chatting, they know and will move ten minutes later. They know what we are doing. “Koalas are amazingly gentle lovely animals.”Ros had been scratched by a koala once and said it hurts.“We are lucky at our place. We have 54 trees in the koala kindie,” she said.“We had one dominant male koala we released called Sid. “He comes back near our place to visit and he impregnated a young koala called MacKenzie. “She loves to hang in the French forest redgum tree and we saw her one day there with a baby with her. She came home with her bub to show us.“Beyond the kindie there are more trees and we saw a wild koala there. It could have been one of the baby koalas we released, they are chipped but not tagged.“We are trying to find out where and how far do koalas move using spatial analysis with GPS. “It’s aproject with wild koalas where we track them. This info will feed into the koala management plan in the area.“FoK also spent 20K on research by Sydney University to find out why koala joeys often die after they are released. “We don’t know why. It’s the first study done. One of the koalas in care climbing in its enclosure.Labour of loveIt’s a labour of love for Ros and Bill and they raise a family of koalas. “It’s good for your soul rescuing and looking after koalas,” she said. “So few of them get released into the wild. “They are a complex animal and their closest living relative if the wombat.“We need a better state government strategy for them and deal with the biggest problem which is the removal of their habitat. “We are driving them to extinction.“When we remove their habitat, it puts them on the ground and they get stressed, diseased and attacked by dogs. “The stress stimulates the koala retrovirus – its like AIDS. And chlamydia affects the females, giving them cystitis on their ovaries and makes them infertile.Recently, FoK responded to a call by someone who found a dead koala found hanging by its head on a farmers gate.“We know it was attacked by a dog," Ros said.“We need to educate people to train their dogs not to attack a koala, or to fence their yards and stop koalas getting onto their land.“Dog attacks are the worst - at least a car hitting one means immediate death. Hot spots“Some of the hot spots where koalas are hit on the roads are on Wyrallah Road at the Bora Ring, Ruthven and McKies Hill Hall.“That’s where we want to see 40 kmh signs posted on the roads, but that needs $40K in funding.Ros outside of one of the FoK koala enclosures.CouncilRos spent nearly 18 years on Lismore City Council as a councillor, from 1992 to 2008, as well as being deputy mayor for two years, then Mayor.She was also on Rous County Council as the chair for two years and a member of the Local Government Association Board for five years.“I always said when I was on Council I wanted to get a koala plan on management in place,” Ros said.“Bob Gates was the mayor then and it didn’t go anywhere. I knew back then I wanted to work with Friends of the Koala. “I was very busy at that time. “I was working full time and doing my PhD in political science, conducting research into women leaders in government in five countries. “I took six months off work to finish my research, and then I met Bill and didn’t finish it as quickly as I wanted.“My studies were done at night and I had trouble sleeping then. I’d be awake at 2am and do my study then.”Ros also worked at Southern Cross University as a lecturer in social sciences for 15 years, before leaving Council to work in Bill’s coffee business, Caddies Coffee. After they sold the business, the two of them took on their koala conservation work full time.Loving Lismore“I love Lismore,” Ros said. “We have a diverse community here and it’s accepting of everything.”Ros grew up with a father who worked for the Commonwealth bank and they moved a lot for work to different Australian capital cities.“I was always the new kid in town. It was hard to make friends when you move all the time. “So when I came to Lismore I found community and felt like I belonged here.“My upbringing made me more introspective and more of a hermit. “It’s important to be reflective.“If anyone says they don’t regret anything they have done, they are not being honest. Everyone makes mistakes.“Being a politician means you need to be in touch with what people in the world are feeling.“I was a rebellious kid. I wanted to study law, but discovered boys and didn’t do so well at school, so I had to do extra school studies to get accepted into university. “Then I went to Latrobe and did legal studies.”Ros first came to Lismore after working around Australia for the public service in employment and industrial relations.“I came to Lismore as a corporate services manager and I was also working at Council writing management plans for them before I ran for Council myself. “I had a good understanding of what to do as I went to every council meeting. “I looked at people who hadn’t read the document before the meeting and thought, I’m going to run.”So Ros ran on a community independents ticket with Diana Roberts and Lyn Carson was voted in as councillor in 1992.“We doubled the number of women on council,” Ros said.“I say to anyone wanting to run for council next year that if you are interested, do it. “You can make changes and get things done.“One of the changes I brought in was to get the votes of councillors recorded so they were accountable for their decisions and introduced public question time.  “It wasn’t always easy being a councillor – people hate you or love you.“If you can please 60% of the people, you are doing well.“Being on council is politics - and being a women on council does bring discrimination.“I always treated everyone with respect until they showed me that I shouldn’t.” When Ros decided to leave Lismore City Council, she said she knew it was time.“Every meeting seemed the same,” she said. “If you are smart, you know when it’s time to go.“I walked away and I only go back to meetings now if they involve koalas.“Now I just want to help people and koalas. “Money doesn’t make me happy, but it would be good to have more to help the koalas.”If you would like to help out Friends of the Koala or find out more information, visit https://www.friendsofthekoala.org/

Dunoon woman Anitra Wenden is embarking on an adventure to paddle the world’s third longest navigable river system – the Murray River in Victoria. As a marine biologist, Anitra has a great love of water, but said her surprise at discovering Australia had one of the longest navigable river systems in the world inspired the adventurer in her. “Every journey needs a destination - the best journey needs to have something you head towards -it needs to be special for you.” – Anitra WendenAs a child, Anitra Wenden grew up watching the Storm Boy, telling the tale of Mr Percival the pelican and his relationship to a young boy on the Murray River in Victoria.“That began my unique romance with Australia’s largest river system,” Anitra said. Having a symbolic destination point is important part of her adventures.Now, Anitra and her friend Patty McGhee are embarking on ten-week, 2,300 km journey of kayaking down the Murray Darling River system from its source to the ocean - ending at Koorong in South Australia where the river flows into the Southern Ocean. Anitra lives in Dunoon on a 30-acre property, and while she doesn’t have a lot of experience kayaking, she has a life long love of the ocean and has done a lot of adventuring.As well as being a marine biologist, she’s a pharmacist who volunteers her time at hospitals in Cambodia, helping to educate other health workers who have less knowledge about the craft of pharmacy.Her adventure begins this weekend, as she and Patty jump into their 7.3 metre long sea kayak and begin their first week of paddling down the most difficult stretch of the fast running narrow Murray River.Anitra's sea kayak.“The now is snow melt starting now,” she said. “The first week of our journey will be hard, so Patty and I have our support crew flowing us along the river in case we get into trouble.”The adventure doesn’t daunt her. Anitra said in the past, she’s bushwalked, backpacked, skied and walked the Camino to Santiago trail.The idea for the adventure started when she and Patty both discovered they were born in January 1964 and the two of them formed a strong connection and desire for adventure.“Neither of us are experienced paddlers but I said to her ‘after a week down the river, you’ll be an expert,” she laughed.“I’ve had a practice paddle with patty recently at lake Ainsworth and we’ve been down the Wilson’s River to Coraki together, but apart from that we haven’t a lot of experience together.“Friends took us to Lake Ainsworth and made us tip out of the boat twice with our rubber kayak skirts attached and practice self-rescue by climbing back into the boat when we were in the water.“It was really hard, but we achieved it with some degree of grace and athletic style.“I did paddle a rubber raft down the Franklin River twice though,” she laughed.Anitra and Patty have spent time gathering supplies to take in their kayak for their long journey, including cooking and camping gear, food and a solar system to recharge their phones – essential so they have a GPS connection to work out where they are while travelling on the journey.“I’ve been a bushwalked for a long time and used to carrying everything on my back so this feels like a luxury to be able to take things in a boat.”While Anitra said they will be able to go to towns and villages close to the river to get fresh food supplies, there will be one stretch of the journey - past Mildura - where for a week they will be cut off and will have to be self-sufficient.“We love visiting bakeries in small towns and are calling this our coffee scroll tour of southern Australia,” she laughed.Part of the attraction of the river journey for Anitra is travelling slow.“You get to see stuff as you are moving slowly and through it we’ll meet people from all walks of life and get to talk to them.“When you walk you cover about five kilometres an hour – it’s about the same on a slow river, paddling.“I’m hoping it will be like my slow canal boat trip in Britain – that was a fantastic way of seeing the countryside and meeting people.“On the canals, I opened and closed 900 locks and had hundreds of conversations with people.“I hope us being in a kayak prompts people to engage with us.”It’s not just meeting people that excites Anita, she also loves the natural environment.“I’m equally drawn to the beauty, solitude and magical moments like silently gliding and seeing a platypus. “I’ve created a Facebook page called Patty and Anitra’s excellent adventure and take photos and make anecdotal observations each day.”While she’s an adventurer these days, Anitra has spent many years working as a marine biologist and applied scientist.She’s also spent two summers in Antarctica scuba diving there as part of the scientific work she was doing.“Then I had my son and for 15 years, my life was about raising a baby,” she said. “Our holidays were home based and I felt frustrated and disconnected from my great passion.“My husband died when my son was 15, and when his schooling finished, I restarted my dedication to the adventuring life.“Since then, I’ve made 12 trips to Cambodia, been to Mount Everest base camp with my son and skiied japan.“Then two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through chemotherapy and radiation for 12 months.“Now, because I have a confirmed BRCA 2 defect inherited from my mother, my sense of automatically assuming I will live till I was 90 has shifted."It fuelled my don’t dream it do it approach to life.”\Now, Anitra is redirecting her passion for water into a journey that she hopes will also bring attention to the plight of the Murray Darling river system.“It’s an issue that’s so broadly recognised in Australia that when I mention I’m paddling the Murray, people’s most common response is ‘will there be enough water there to paddle?“I also used to think it was a muddy, turbulent ditch full of carp that farmers squabbling over – and the city of Adelaide gets the worst tasting drinking water from it.“But when I watched an episode of Backroads on TV about the Murray River, I was struck by i’s beauty and it challenged my assumption.“That’s when I found out it’s the third longest navigable river in the world. Here I was at 54 and I didn’t know that – it’s only beaten by the Amazon and the Nile rivers.“I felt kind of ashamed I didn’t know and I’m going to see it for myself.“There is a water crisis in Australia and we can’t take it for granted that the water will be there in future.”Anitra in Cambodia, training doctors in pharmacology.As well as wanting to draw attention to the water security crisis in Australia, Anitra has been helping hospitals in Cambodia, by training them in pharmacology.“When I moved to the Northern Rivers, I wanted to reinvent myself, so I went back to uni and retrained as a pharmacist,” she said.“I liked the new science and the academic and intellectual endeavour.“Most professions have pinnacle point at the age of 40 and people see you as less relevant, vital and energetic. There are few professions you get a boost for being viewed as older.“My plan was to be a pharmacist as I became white haired.“When my husband died, I volunteered as a as pharmacist in Cambodia and it was such a gratifying experience.“I went to Siem Reap as a pharmacy educator and work with doctors, training them to trouble shoot in pharmacy.“I have better training than they do so I mentor them a few times a year and give lectures." I also work with pharmacists to develop clinical pharmacy skills in a country with lower training standards. “There’s nothing special about me - I’m just an ordinary pharmacist, but I’m better trained and have better knowledge.”Now, as she departs on her journey down the Murray River, Anitra laughed saying the biggest worry was if her friendship with Patty will stay strong through the ten-week journey.“We’ve never spent 24 hours in each other’s company before,’ Anitra laughed. “I hope we are still friends after ten weeks strapped into a boat together.”The women are due to come home in early December.

Eltham based veterinarian Stephen Van Mil is passionate about drawing attention to what's happening to wildlife around the world. His passion for wildlife has taken him to Borneo operate on a sun bear and an orangutan and he has hopes to open a wildlife hospital in the Northern Rivers region.Operation Sun Bear Borneo is one of the many projects Eltham-based veterinarian Stephen Van Mil is passionate about. He’s currently in Borneo with a team of specialist vets, implanting a 3D printed pelvis into a mistreated female sun bear called Hitam, who was poached from the wild.Hitam the sun bear.Stephen has been a vet for 35 years, and as well as being a day to day vet, operating and treating domestic pets, he works with conservation groups around the world, raising awareness of the plight of our wildlife.“As a kid, I loved animals,” he said. “As a five-year-old, I told my parents I would be a vet when I grew up. There’s no other option - and that’s what I did.“Now I do day to day vet work with dogs, cats and horses, but I always wanted to do more for wildlife.”Born and raised in Perth, Stephen moved to the Northern Rivers five years ago to bring up his daughter here.Before that, he was a resident vet on the Today Show with Channel 9 for 14 years, where he would do a weekly segment about domestic pets and wildlife. “While I was in Sydney, I also set up animal hospitals there,” he said. ““It was the stepping-stone that led me to working with conservation groups.”He has also toured Borneo, Africa and the Amazon, making wildlife documentaries and he saw a need to raise awareness and help wild animals around the world.“That’s when I co-founded Orangutan Foundation International Australia (OIFA),” he said. “I worked with Coby Steele who now runs the OIFA care centre in Borneo and we raised over $2 million in two years to buy land and support activities in the care centre.“It was through the care centre that we found out about the sun bear and I was sent her xrays to look at so I could get it sorted out.Hitam's filed-down teeth.“The Sun bear was taken from the wild as a cub. Her mother was killed by poachers who filed her canine teeth down to make her a safer pet and get a better price for her. “She was sold to a family who fed her and tinned milk, and a s a result she didn’t grow. “She’s small for a six -year-old bear and her pelvis didn’t develop, so now her pelvic canal is only one centimetre wide and it should be about five centimetres wide. “She’s in agony and can’t pass faeces. “I reached out to other surgeons in Australia to see if we could do something for her and got a team of vets together to donate their time to the project - including the head vet at Taronga Zoo in Sydney who has lots of experience and knowledge of anaesthesia and post-operation pain management.“It seems like a lot of resources and effort to help this one little bear, but it’s a passion of mine to draw attention to the bigger issues about what’s happening to dozens of other bears and orangutans around the world.“Most people don’t know and don’t care about illegal poaching, and the deforestation for palm oil plantations that’s happening in the animals’ home countries.”The surgical team’s operation on the sun bear’s pelvis is expected to last three to four hours.“It’s a triple pelvic osteotomy, where we cut the pelvic bone cut into three parts and rotate the hip out to allow her a more normal sized canal opening,” he said.“A Melbourne industrial engineer with a passion for wildlife made a custom plate that we’ll put inside her to hold everything in place - making her a bionic bear.“He made the implant plate by 3D printing it – it’s a world first for a bear.“No other sun bear in the world has this and never will again – it’s pretty cool. Xray of Hitam's pelvis.“It will give her quality of life - she has 15-20 years of life left and hopefully we can draw global attention to the animals’ plight.”Stephen wants to see changes happen in countries across the world to stop illegal poaching of animals.“In Kenya, the government changed the law to be immediate death for poachers and it moved the illegal trade to other African countries. “We need to see stronger laws and enforcements brought in in Indonesia too for people keeping wild animals as pets, whether it’s orangutans, sun bears or macaques – whatever people get money for.“In Indonesia and China, people with money want to show off by having these animals.“Palm oil companies often offer a bounty for a dead, adult orangutans, and it’s US$50 for a baby bear at a vet.Stephen said a crowd funding exercise raised $20,000 in 20 days to cover the costs of the sun bear’s operation and rehabilitation.“We’ve had huge support from the general public to make this project happen,” he said. “A major vet company step in and provided the money we needed for drugs and equipment.“I’m humbled and overwhelmed by the positive response to one bear in Borneo and the calibre of the team we have. We are not mucking around – this is serious.“We’ll also operate on an orangutan called Esther while we are there. She was taken in from the wild in pain with a broken and dislocated right arm.“The fracture hasn’t healed because of malnutrition and the dislocation is beyond repair. “We’re going to reconstruct her shoulder and relieve her pain and give her reasonable functionality back. Esther the orangutan.When the sun bear’s operation is over, Stephen said her rehabilitation will be monitored by Borneo vets, and Stephen will give advice as needed through video conferencing.As part of Operation Sun Bear, Stephen will be taking a film crew to make a documentary about the project.“We’ll be uploading stories every day onto Facebook and Instagram, for anyone who wants to keep up to date,” he said.Hitam the sun bear.“I think this project can get bigger, with the way the project is going and the passion behind it that’s attracting global attention.”As well as continuing to be a locum vet, in the future, Stephen has a dream to set up a wildlife hospital in the Northern Rivers region.  “The idea has received extraordinary support from local people who have gifted land for the project,” he said. “It’s still in the early days of planning, but I’m working on it.“Domestic pets have owners that can pay money to get them looked after, but what about wildlife? Who cares for these animals?“Wildlife carers like WIRES and seabird rescue take in animals every day, and vets around the country provide free care for wildlife – it’s just part of what you do. Stephen said the Northern Rivers region is the most densely populated region with wildlife in Australia. “The numbers of animals coming into care is endless,” he said. “Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary have 11,000 admissions a year and one third of them are from the Northern Rivers region – and that’s just the ones that are lucky enough to be brought in.”Being a vet has its challenges, and Stephen said “a vet is 21 specialists wrapped into one cover”.“Every animal is different and being a vet is a tough job,” he said. “If you are a human doctor, you only have one animal species to know about, but a vet needs to know every single animal species and every discipline in medicine, from radiography to dentistry.“As a vet, you need to think outside the box. Animals can’t talk to you and tell you where they have pain. If f they try and bite you, there’s a reason. “Generally, owners are unreliable providers of information, so you need to work intuitively and run tests to work out what’s going on. “Sometimes if I need to put an animal down, it’s in the animal’s best interests – they might be old and suffering and we offer them a quick and painless procedure.  “It’s the human’s emotions that get you – it’s bloody hard knowing the animal is ok, but dealing with the owner and their emotion is hard. You become part psychologist and human therapist too.”If you would like to find out more about Operation Sun Bear and follow Stephen’s work, visit https://orangutanfoundation.org.au/ or look for Operation Sun Bear Borneo on Facebook.

Southern Cross University researcher Renaud Joannes-Boyau is one of the world’s leading experts on techniques for the analysis of pre-historic bone and teeth fragments and he made global headlines earlier this year with his discoveries about the breastfeeding habits of one of humanity’s earliest ancestors, Australopithecus africanus. He spoke to the Lismore App about how he ended up working at a university in regional NSW and what his work means for our understanding of human evolution.I've always been fascinated by history and archaeology. My grandma did five masters degrees and seven undergrads during her life. She became a widow at 55, so I think she was bored and so she went to uni. I'm from France and she took me all over the country and even across Europe to look at archaeological sites, cathedrals and museums and all that. So I think she gave me the virus very early on. I remember we went to the south of France and there was the skull of a Cro-Magnon, which is a prehistoric human and the first one to arrive in Europe. I really wanted to touch the skull and I remember asking what should I do to actually touch the skull? And she said, you need to become an archaeologist. So the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I did my first undergrad in biochemistry and genetics, a second undergrad in archaeology, a masters degree in applied physics to archaeology and then I came to Australia in 2006 to do my PHD at the Australian National University. The title of my thesis was a 'Direct Dating of Human Remains'. I worked for a while at Wollongong and then I moved to SCU.I came to Australia for tourism first because, I always loved the country so I was very interested to actually see what it was like. But also, I had an opportunity to get a PHD scholarship with Professor Rainer Grün. He’s about to retire now, but he was the world leader in dating human fossils and also a very big figure in geochemistry, which is looking at the chemistry of teeth and bones and things like that. So when I got a PHD offer from him, it was just too good to pass up.I came to the Northern Rivers with my now ex-wife. She had a scholarship to work at Southern Cross so I came too. Australopithecus africanus skull. Supplied: Dr Luca Fiorenza, Monash University.At first, SCU didn't do what I do. We are actually very, very few people in the world doing what I do. So SCU just let me work there in the beginning, but I had no salary, and then I applied for a lot of different grants from the Australian Research Council - basically the government - and then eventually SCU gave me a contract and then a fellowship and then I never left. I built these two labs at SCU and obviously since we are publishing important research, they are not too bad.I founded the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group which is part of a research center called Southern Cross Geoscience.I've got two different labs. One is the dating lab, where I've got an Electron Spin Resonance spectrometer. It's a little bit of a mouthful. These devices always have very complicated names. We call it an ESR. There's not many in the world doing dating, so it's one of only a few. The other lab is the one we used for my latest study, which is where we do laser ablation ICPMS [inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry]. What we do is ablate [gradually remove] a little bit of the surface of the sample with a laser that vaporises the molecules into atoms. Then these atoms are measured by the mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer is really good at measuring the mass of elements and can tell you exactly what elements are present in your sample.The ESR is a relatively cheap, about $200,000 and the laser ablation ICPMs is basically the price of a nice house. Probably $600,000.Southern Cross, despite being regional has quite an amazing research infrastructure. A lot of small unis don't have that kind of equipment and a lot of big unis do not have what we have either. Certainly, if you go to the big G8 universities, they have amazing facilities but SCU is not shy in that manner.I teach postgraduate students - so master degree, honors and PHD students - but I do not have undergraduate teaching. My work is mainly research and a lot of analysis. I travel a lot, to pick up fossils and to go on site. About five or six months of the year I'm on the road, which is very tiring now, but I do still enjoy it. But most of what I do is basically analysis; a lot of spending time in front of computers to try to understand what the data means. And then writing, constantly writing; either writing papers or grant applications and I'm writing a book at the moment as well.I'm very specialized in teeth. I also do bones but I would say 90% of my work is on teeth. I look at the human evolution at large, mainly the timing of human evolution. My work asks about different species: when they appear? How do they migrate and colonize new landscapes and environments? So that's one of the things that I do. The other thing is looking at all the analysis we can do on teeth. A lot of people work on the morphology of teeth; they compare the size, the shape and so on. And then they try to find clues in it. What I do is get clues from things we can't see directly. I use analytical techniques, physics and chemistry and even mathematics, in a way to extract the data and new knowledge that we can't get just looking at it.Dr Renaud Joannes Boyau with a Homo Naledi tooth.I examine teeth in a similar way to the scientists who take core samples from ancient ice in Antarctica or from trees. When the ice builds up, it has layers and trees are the same. Teeth grow in layers too. You have layers forming every day and when we do the analysis, we reconstruct a map of those layers and those maps have a temporal and spatial resolution. Everything that surrounded the individual is recorded in their teeth. So it's the geology, the environment as well, it's the diet, the water that they drink, even the pollution sometimes and so on. This is very useful, especially when we don't have any other clues. For very old fossils we have very little to go on, so the little that we have we really have to maximize.The biggest work I've done, after I finished my PHD I developed a new technique to directly date human remains with minimal damage. This lead on to a few publications. One of the most important one was in 2017 with the dating of the oldest homosapiens ever found which was in northern Africa in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. This was also published in Nature. We even made the New York Times front cover and so on. So that was quite a big, big thing. In 2017, we were the first to find a way to detect a breastfeeding signal in teeth and that was a Neanderthal - the very close cousins of humans that lived in Europe and died off about 45,000 years ago. Then we did some more work early on this year and we published some work on Neanderthals that showed their migration pattern and seasonality. Dr Renaud Joannes-Boyau in the cave in China where Giganto was found.In July, we published an article in Nature on the Australopithecus, which is one of the earliest ancestors of our lineage, about 2.5 to 2.1 million years old. From those teeth we were able to look at the breastfeeding timing, the nursing sequence, but also we were able to see the diet, we could see a seasonal pattern - we could see that they were stressed when the seasons were bad with food shortages. We could also extrapolate some body mass fluctuations during the season and then at last we were able to look at their migration pattern and see that they didn't move much on the landscape. The latest study was of course not just me. It was a massive group of scientists and I was just the team leader that basically gathered a lot of people that have a lot of expertise. And that's the only way you can achieve good science is by being collegial and a team player.What we are trying to understand is who we are and where we come from as humans and basically every time we make a discovery it's a new piece of the puzzle. One of the curious things about Homo sapiens is that our babies are very demanding for the first few years. If you look at the offspring from other animals, from other mammals, like the baby horse they are able to run within a few hours. Human babies require many, many years to be independent and mature. And with modern society it is getting longer and longer. You can ask my parents. It took me many years to be mature.Australopithecus africanus tooth. Supplied: Dr Luca Fiorenza, Monash University.The Homo sapiens is unusual because we have quite a short breastfeeding period, but very, very long maturation and we want to know: why is it the case? We look at previous species and try to understand: when did it start? How did it evolve? One of the things that we start to see is that one of the reasons that Homo sapiens have been so successful is because in evolution we are very adaptable. We are very opportunistic. If you line up all the animals that ever lived on Earth and then you had to pick one that you believed would be the most successful animal, you probably wouldn't pick Homo sapiens. They've got no fur, no big teeth, no protection. But they are so opportunistic, so resilient, so adaptable to the environment that they’re able to constantly colonize new environments.And I think that's what we see in a Australopithecus africanus. This species is living in an environment that is not very suitable. It's not very good in terms of food supply and so on but probably also very little predation. They chose this environment instead of moving to a better place where they might have more food. Instead, they stay there and adapt to this place by having a periodical breastfeeding system, being more diverse and broad in their diets, being very opportunistic. So they would go for fruit, flowers, leafs, roots, probably meat as well, carcasses. Anything they could find. It's kind of like a clue to why Homo sapiens are so successful.We have a lot more studies actually that will come out soon as well. We continue to look at the timing of different species, continue to look at the way Homo sapiens migrated around the world. We want expand this study on Australopithecus Africanus to other species of the human lineage. So the first Homo which is our genus, we want to look at the earliest one that appears on the landscape around two million years ago and see if there is any difference with Australopithecus. We also want to look more at primates in general and much older primates. In the primates, you have the separation with monkeys a long time ago. We want to look them and see what they've been doing and how they evolved in terms of breastfeeding and diet and so on.The ultimate goal is to understand better where we come from and how we got to where we are and to reconstruct this evolution of nursing across the ages. 

Environmental scientist and Landcare volunteer and secretary Kristen den Exter has spent her life planting trees and regenerating the land. Bringing life back to the riverbanks of Lismore is one of her passions. She encourages everyone to come to Riverfest on September 7 and Big Scrub Rainforest Day on September 21.Floating down the Wilson’s River in a canoe and looking at the trees she planted on the riverbank 25 years ago is one of Landcare volunteer Kristen den Exter’s favourite things to do in Lismore.Landcare volunteer Vanessa Ekins shares time with Kristen den Exter on the Wilson's River looking at the 25 year old tree plantings.Kristen has been a passionate volunteer with the Wilson's River Landcare Group since 1994. The group, established in 1990, is one of the first Landcare groups to be established in NSW.Kristen said planting trees and regenerating the landscape has always been a way of life for her and her family. “My dad was a tree man and was arrested at the Terania Creek logging protests in the 1970s,” she said. “He was a passionate conservationist, educator and lobbyist. I was seven when I went to my first Terania Creek meeting - till things got too heated.“In the 70s, my dad could already see decline in the forests and he had a plant nursery down the side of our house in Lismore. He knew that if everybody could plant trees, we’d provide another part of the solution."Inspired by her father, Kristen went on to study environmental science and became a lecturer in the environmental science department at Southern Cross University (SCU). She now works as an engagement facilitator based at SCU Lismore campus, as well as being the secretary of the Landcare group. “As an environmental scientist, it can be pretty depressing and emotionally taxing when you know about the rate of species decline, so I had to do something and I went and found people who planted trees.”In 1994, she joined together with two other women and a lawn mower and started planting trees at the Duck Pond in South Lismore. Their energy sparked a vibrant volunteer organisation that is still systematically regenerating the riverbanks and parks in Lismore, on public and private land. “Once you start doing it, the trees become our babies,” she said. “And as we see the ecosystems come back to life - I don’t ever want to stop.“One of the things that sustains me is meeting and working with others and trying to turn around 200 years of the devastation that colonialism and deforestation has wreaked on this country.”Kristen said the best way to see the Wilson’s River as it might have looked before the land was cleared is to take a canoe past the rainforest trees planted in Pritchard Park in North Lismore (near the skating rink). The view from a canoe of both sides of the Pritchard Park plantings on the Wilson's River.“I’ve had a long love affair with this area,” she said. “In 25 years, we have transformed it and planted on both sides of the river, so you get a feel what the riverbank is like with vegetation.” One side of the river at Pritchard Park is a 25 year old planting which was planted at the first National Tree Day in 1994 with EnVITE and the help of school kids. The other side of the river is a 15 year old planting.“At the site you can hear a phenomenal symphony of bird sound,” Kristen said.“I saw a kingfisher there a couple of months ago. The kingfisher told me ‘you’ve put back enough trees for me’.“We’ll never get back what was taken from the Big Scrub rainforest years ago, but in that area, it feels like the plantings have always been there. “I don’t thing we realised what we were doing when we started. We knew riverbank needed it, and the trees grow fast if maintained well. “When you cross Faucets Bridge and look upstream at the trees we planted, it fills our hearts with joy.”“Originally, there was just camphor laurel, jacaranda and privet growing behind the skating rink until the Rainforest Information Centre planted rainforest trees there. It then became the focus of Landcare’s attention and we had green core teams working there. Pictured: Dave de Nardi, Dave Dreher, Kristin den Exter, Marty, Vanessa Ekins. Picture by Andrew Sooby“The most recent plantings are behind the Winsome Hotel gully and in Pritchard Park, we are now working with neighbouring landholders.”The Pritchard Park site was only 800 meters of riverbank, but Kristen said it was hard work to keep everything viable. “Planting trees is a long term project - it’s the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “The majority of work is before planting to get the site ready - then we keep the trees alive.As the sites grew bigger and older, the lawnmower just wasn’t enough anymore. So the Landcare group now uses larger machinery for maintenance and works with the support of with Lismore City Council in planning and maintaining the sites. Kristen said she grew up in Lismore through many years of floods and saw the inundation of the town with flood water. “I understood why people wanted the levy wall built, but it was a turning point for me when we started to lose that connection with the river and the river landscape,” she said. “So we planted so many trees for Lismore City Council at the time on public land along the river.”With a core group of five volunteer organisers, Wilson’s River Landcare Group relies on the helping hands of everyone in the community who come along to the organised community tree planting days twice a year.Volunteers planting trees at National Tree Day this year.“At National Tree Day this year, lots of people in the local community came along to help with the tree planting and we’re hoping more will turn out for the tree planting for the 21st annual Big Scrub Rainforest Day on September 21,” she said.The day is organised in conjunction with Big Scrub Landcare group, Planet Ark and Helping Hands. “Everyone is welcome to join us to plant at Simes bridge at 11am on September 21 - we don’t like getting up too early,” Kristen laughed. “It’s the bridge on way to Richmond River High School at the end of Molesworth Street where it becomes Winterton Parade. Bring your water bottle and be sun smart.”Next weekend, on September 7, Riverfest will be held at Riverside Park, near Ballina Road Bridge on the Wilson’s River. It’s a family friendly community event celebrating the river and strengthening our connection to it, with lots of entertainment and information stalls.“We’re working in partnership with Northern Rivers Science Hub and Helping Hands to bring Riverfest to the banks of the river and spread some river love,” Kristen said.“We have to embrace that we live on a flood plain and reconnect with the river. It’s the confluence of two different catchments coming together and well never change that. Our amazing wetlands and floodplains need those floods, but it causes us stress.“The more in tune we are with the river, we can make a new approach to disasters like flooding. “This festival is a way for people to come share talks and stories and reconnect with the river. “We’ll bring the SES and emergency response teams together with the canoe club and speakers from our community to talk about how we can all support each other living in a river city.”Kristen said the Wilson’s River has been declared one of the most unhealthy rivers on the east coast.“It’s not healthy enough for us to swim in,” she said. “We’ve taken our water for granted and the catchment needs us. How can we be resilient as a river city and repair some of the damage that’s been done?”“While the eastern freshwater cod used to be a fish species living in the river, now it is extinct because the water quality is too poor. “But the river is still home to many creatures under the water we don’t see.“There are bass in the river – a species of estuarine fish that travels up the tidal river to Boat Harbour, where we have marine water mixing that occurs.“There are freshwater mussels, turtles and eels in the creeks and fishing bats in Brown’s Creek drain that fish river turtles. We also have a carp problem and have an annual carp muster.“So the river isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. It’s just very big.“The more we connect with country, the more healing and respect there will be for our country and nation, including our First Peoples too. “Recently at the National Tree Day planting, we had the most moving acknowledgement of country and Aunty Thelma James told us stories of the sites we were working on. There’s so much history of the utilisation of the river that we don’t know about. “Landcare is for everybody and we need to do it because people have done wrong. Our rivers were cleared first so that the first settlers could get out of their boats. They grew corn on river bank and they used the rivers as roads to get to the cedar. “Prior to European settlement the Big Scrub was the largest tract of lowland subtropical rainforest in Australia. This rainforest has since been reduced to less than 1% of its former range."As a result the NSW Scientific Committee recently determined that lowland rainforest on floodplain in the NSW North Coast Bio-region is an endangered ecological community.”Kristen encourages people to come along to the future planting days and help out regenerating the forest, but if they can’t be there, they can help fund buying the resources needed to do the work. And Landcare will be happy to plant the trees for them.Volunteers planting trees at National Tree Day this year.“We’re 25 years on and I say ‘more trees’,” she said. “One of my roles is as fundraiser and we’ve been crowd-funding to help buy resources like trees and mulch. We’ve already raised over $3000 and are always looking for more contributions.“We collaborate and source trees locally from Firewheel Nursery, friends of the Koala and Friends of Lismore Rainforest Botanic Gardens.“Ngulingah tree nursery propagate at Nimbin rocks nursery and have an amazing collection of bush food species. “If you want to plant trees, make sure they are collected locally.For more information about Riverfest at Riverside Park by the Wilson’s River, near the dog park on Victoria Street on September 7, from 11am to 4pm, click here.For more information about Big Scrub Rainforest Day, click here.For information about Wilson’s River Landcare Group Inc click here.

John Stewart is a widely travelled and renowned educator, consultant and author who has featured on The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show, Kerry-Ann show, and the Today show. After finishing up as head of Bali’s famous Green School in 2015, Mr Stewart’s latest project is establishing the first Living School in Lismore’s CBD.The building we’re renovating for the Living School in Conway St was originally the place my parents bought to raise a family. I'm one of eight kids and we all attended the local schools. My father was a doctor and used to drive around in an old blue Mercedes. He ended up building the surgery next door, a “lovely” Bexhill brick building, which is probably the ugliest building in Lismore.The building formerly occupied by Dr Stewart's surgery is being renovated to become his son's school. PHOTO: Supplied.We were eight kids in 10 years, so as we were growing older, he built another block and then another so everyone had their own room. Anyway, they moved out while I was overseas and closed the door and left it a bit like a time capsule.I'd been teaching all around the world, and came back because they are now at an age where they probably need a little bit of support - my father does especially - and I had this great dream of coming back from the Green School in Bali where I was working and creating a school here.The certificate of registration from the New South Wales Education Standards Authority for Living School was sent out today in the mail. As soon as I get that, I’ll begin organising community engagement meetings, then there will be teacher engagement meetings, teacher training and enrollment applications ahead of opening next yearI'm registered from kindergarten to year 8 so I've got the option to fulfill that however I'd like to start with a five, six, seven, eight program to begin with, and maybe a kindergarten so I can grow. I'm waiting to see what the interest is.In a way I always wanted to be a teacher. I remember in Year Three at Lismore Demonstration School, which is now Lismore Public, we had student teachers coming in to teach and my teacher at the time said to my father: “Your son should be a teacher; he's already better than the people we're getting”.So I don't know if that's true, but I studied teaching at Southern Cross University which was at the time the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education and then the University of New England Northern Rivers.I went travelling around the world before settling down for a time in England with my now wife. My first job there was at London’s Hill House International School, which Prince Charles attended, after my wife and her mother dressed me up in a blazer and kicked me out of the car in front of the school. “They employ Australians,” they said.I’ve taken different things from all the schools where I’ve worked.I think that my English teaching experiences taught me that there are disciplines for confidence. We need to teach and educate with mindfulness and also with the sense of the individual.The school in London was all about how you can use a building but the school is really the people who are in connected into it, which is one of the key elements of Living School.When you mention a school such as Cambridge, everyone thinks of it as a very traditional school, but St John’s, Cambridge, was a school which was very much focused on the individual needs of students. The headmaster was very progressive. He took down all the honour boards and he put up the students’ art, which caused a huge furore. But he was that sort of person. Very intelligent. A very driven bloke.Back in Australia, Central Coast Grammar was really about family connections. How do you connect students together? There were house families and systems where you have vertical connectedness, not just a horizontal.When I worked at Tudor House in Moss Vale, it was all about responsible risk-taking. Risk is a key feature in learning. So how do you model that into the excursions, the outside world and bringing sustainability? We created organic gardens. The students camped out and fed themselves. So that's all coming into Living School as well.The Green School in Bali. PHOTO: Supplied.Working at Green School in Bali had a major impact on me as well, but I had already written a treaties and formulated my ideas as to what my school should be by then. When I went to Green School, I could see bits of it, but not in its uniformity.I was looking at whether can you create balance instead of just having a wonderful experience. Can you have the discipline of education for science, maths, English as well as connectedness and collaboration? I believe you can.Living School's all about living philosophy, living architecture, living well, living learning. The challenge is to create a school that actually lives and learns and grows together. That's where I feel progressive education needs to be. I don't want to be alternate. Alternate means a parallel railway track while progressive is saying, let's take the best from all of these things or, what we consider to be best for our community, and let's go forward.So in Living School there'll be aspects that might be from a Montessori-type approach, there might be an aspect of a Steiner-esque sort of approach - some of the ideals, but without the doctrine - and so it grows. There'll be some from the government schools.An artist's impression of what the Living School will look like once the renovations are complete. PHOTO: Supplied.I'm not critical of schools. All I'm critical of is lack of diversity. If we have a monoculture, we don't have the richness and the growth and the vitality of a very diverse biology and ecosystem. Schools should be fostering more variation between schools so the good ideas that might pollinate can be spread.There are two attributes that we know will create wellness, better relationships, better families and a better future and those two attributes are a love of learning and gratitude. Are we focusing on engendering those two things in our schools today? I don't know.If we've got disengagement, then I'd say love of learning isn't there. If we've got people continually bombarding and expecting more, we haven't got gratitude. So I want people to come into this arena, this sense of place with a with a sense of wonder and a sense of peace.A lot of schools and a lot of alternative schools have kind of a locked in view. They see the campus as their domain. They're fearful of strangers. They're fearful of risk. They're fearful of failure and all of those elements are actually vital aspects of learning. So the concept of Living School is first of all, to connect with the community.Being in the CBD of Lismore means that parents will be able to actually feel connected to the school. They can come and they can have a shared drink and meal with the kids. It means we can move into the community and start to use public spaces that are not necessarily being utilized as much as they used to be.How do you get students and young people to actually want to be in the public library? You take them there. You establish the routine. So we would look to use the public library and art gallery, we'd look to get involved in the town and to use the facilities of the university and TAFE and make ourselves more about a connected community.Another of the great concerns that most schools have is about the risk in excursions but what if excursions were really viable parts of learning? Most students, most children, most people, they want to see the connection. If we don't connect lessons with the real world, it's just sitting on a page and it's boring.So that being the case in the context of Lismore, how do we get kids into community? Excursions. How can we get kids out into farmland? Excursions. There's no reason why you have to be trapped in a campus or that you have to invest all your money inside of a campus. Build a building, and then get out into the real world and connect with it.John Stewart is fixing up an old train carriage to use as a classroom at the Living School. PHOTO: Supplied.It's all about wonder. Dr Benjamin Spock's son Michael Spock used to create museums and his whole focus was that people and especially students and especially children need to see the workings of the building.So then I started thinking, okay, well then how do you create a school that's more wonderful, full of wonder? You have to intentionally do it.So when you go into this building, there are going to be places where you can see how the electrics are. There will be a ceiling that's missing so you can see how the roof is structured. There will be a window in the so you see you see how lift moves. It's going to be open-plan with breakout spaces. It's going to have an old railway carriage called "the train of thought". We've got the tree of life.The area for the younger children at the Living School will feature the "Tree of Life". PHOTO: Supplied.There's a disconnect with nature at present and if it continues we're going to all be lovely living in little boxes but we're going to find the great demise of our natural habitat. How do you change that educationally? So there's a big focus on climate change, pollution and the concerns of the future. So the Living School also needs to have a living architecture.It's all about creating wonder. It's all about bringing in a sense of wonder and amazement. I want to have a place of engagement where things are wonderful.

Naarah Rodwell recently marked one year in the role of chief executive of CASPA, the Lismore-based children's residential and foster care provider. She spoke to the Lismore App this week about her journey, the big changes and rapid growth underway at CASPA and her tragic trial-by-fire during her first year in the top job.I grew up in Alstonville in a very large family. I'm one of nine biological children and my parents were foster carers as well. I had lots of foster kids come live in our home when we were growing up, and some who were long term. I have a foster brother who, well, he's my brother now as adults.Interestingly, my foster brother came into our lives from the North Coast Children's Home when my parents became his carers. I remember the day when we picked him up from the North Coast Children's Home, which is the site where CASPA has its administrative headquarters now.Naarah Rodwell with some of her big family. PHOTO: Supplied.I was just a very little girl at the time, but I remember driving up the driveway and being really intrigued about what happened in that building. How did these very unfortunate, disadvantaged children come to be here? Why were they there and why were we picking up this boy that I eventually ended up caring very deeply about as my brother?When I've really reflected on why I got into this industry, I think it was that moment in time in my childhood where I realized that there were kids who were just so much worse off than I was. I think that really sparked a passion in me. Ever since then I've been a bit of an advocate, even throughout school and then post school. I always intended on working in the child protection or human services sector.When I came back to this region in 2010 with my husband, I'd been working in the sector in Sydney for about seven or eight years. I needed a break so we bought a cafe in Ballina. I'd never run a cafe before and it was a steep learning curve but it was great fun.Then around 2012 I realized my passion had returned and I needed to go back to contributing towards people who needed my advocacy and support. I told my husband and he said, you just go and do what you need to do. So I started working at CASPA.The building that houses CASPA's administrative headquarters used to be the North Coast Children's Home. PHOTO: Supplied.I soon saw that there were gaps in our service delivery and worked to bring in new programs. I have a real passion around the foster care space and in particular wanting to attract and recruit foster carers to care for young people with very complex needs. These are the young people that tend to end up in long-term residential care, which doesn't necessarily meet all of their needs. Certainly not in the long term.It is very difficult when you've got your own family and your own life stresses to consider taking on a complex needs child or young person. But those kids are so deserving precisely because of how complex their needs are and there are so many gaps in the service system for them.There is definitely much more happening now, with a lot of sector reform, but at the time they were too often in the too hard basket. There wasn't a lot of emphasis on the need to advocate for them and to find carers and also upskill and support carers to take on these kids.My first real project for CASPA was bringing about a foster care program which provides 12 months of intensive training and then wraps very significant additional supports around them so they have access to a clinician and a professional development program in addition to mandatory training.My focus on foster carers came from my experience in a home where there was foster care occurring and seeing the complete lack of support that was provided to my parents who were caring for teenagers with very complex needs who had experienced really disrupted childhoods and lots of adversity in their life.The support is not actually for the child directly as much as it is for the carer because if you support the carer, they can support and nurture that child. They are the tool and the instrument for change.It was a real journey for CASPA because in the past the organisation had just been a residential care provider and it was the first time it had done foster care. I think we’ve been doing really well in that area and we've drastically built on what it was back in 2012 to where we are now. It was my baby and I think that the concept of supporting carers has been adopted not just at CASPA but right across the state.It's definitely been very rewarding seeing some of the outcomes that have been achieved for children and young people who otherwise would probably be in the too hard basket. These are kids that you see go through 10, 15, 20 placement breakdowns, different homes. Seeing some of these kids stabilize in one placement has been brilliant.CASPA staff commemorate Reconciliation Day with a smoking ceremony. PHOTO: Supplied.I was told by the CEO at the time - coming from the board - that CASPA needed to diversify and grow so over time I started the foster care program and then I some other fee for service programs and clinical-based work. My role grew and grew and grew and I ended up in the general manager position reporting to the CEO, but essentially with all of CASPA's programs under my leadership.Then last July we had a change in management and movement in the executive space and with the board, and I was appointed CEO. So I've just completed my first 12 months as the CEO.Reflecting on the last year that I've had, it's been a massive transition. A big journey. A lot has happened but above all it's been a year of tragedies.About eight weeks after I started as CEO, a staff member died in a single vehicle car accident while she was working. It was my responsibility to rock up to work the next day and face a workforce of 250 people who all knew her, who were all going to be deeply impacted. And then all the kids that knew her and looked up to her. Her nickname was Mama Max. That was really hard.But I'm actually very grateful for the experience, not in the sense that I wanted something like that to happen to shape me, but it certainly has made me a better human being and it's definitely made me a far better leader than I possibly could have been.Not long after the fatal car accident, one of our children in care passed away, a child that I knew well. I was in a very different role when he first came to CASPA and I'd worked with him and his family extensively.When he died last year, it was devastating on a personal level and a professional level, in every sense of the word. I always thought that losing a child in my care would be the one thing I couldn’t cope with, that would make me quit. But what it actually did was inspire me to look deeper and further, to find out what could we have done differently. To try and work out what we could learn from tragedy.I miss him every day and I grieve for my staff that have been deeply affected by it. There's nothing more you can say about it than the fact that it deeply affects people. And despite all our training, I'm proud of the fact that my staff are affected because it means that they're very humanly connected.I think that was probably the steepest learning curve I could have had as a CEO coming in. But out of both those tragedies has been born a greater commitment and connectedness to the work that we're doing. We've learned how to do things in a really meaningful way, particularly with families.CASPA staff during a training workshop. PHOTO: Supplied.The family of a staff member that passed away was integral to our decision making and to how we did things beyond that event. Her family taught us so much about how to do things in a meaningful way. There's no book that I can read that will tell me what to do when a staff member dies. You need to talk to the families. You need to find out what their wishes are, what we can and can't do and what's important to them.So when I reflect on the 12 months that we've had, what I've seen is a real shift in all of our leaders because we've all learned together collectively on the spot how to take adversity and lead people through it and how to, as an organization, recover, recuperate and become more resilient.The other thing that has happened in the last 12 months is a real strengthening of the connection between the board and the organization. We've also got an incredibly dedicated chairperson now, who came in at the same time pretty much as me, who is a former crown prosecutor and who has a lifetime of incredibly valuable experience that he brings into his role.Lismore Mayor Issac Smith presents the Outstanding Business Leader Award to Naarah Rodwell at the recent 2019 Lismore Business Awards. PHOTO: Supplied.Looking to the future, we’re focusing on evidence-based practice. At the moment, we run some evidence based programs and then in its entirety, right across every program of CASPA we do evidence-informed work. So we've got a three-year plan that will see every piece of work that we do being evidence-based.Meanwhile, the organisation and the board have identified early intervention as the area that we want to grow. We actually want to reduce the number of children in care. If you look at that from the perspective of our business model, that's where our funding comes from, so we're in a way talking about reducing in size but ultimately children do better at home, with their families.So we want to be doing the funded work but also work that's beyond what's funded by the government by being able to operate as a charity. We're really driving this concept around "it takes a community to raise a child" and therefore the community needs to participate and give in order to help raise all children. That will enable us over the next few years to apply our evidence-based work and do more than what we're being funded to do because families need more than what is being funded by the government. That's where we're heading.For information about how to become a foster parent and about CASPA, head to: https://www.caspa.asn.au/

Lloyd Howard, known as "110 Per Cent", is the heart and soul of Goonellabah FC and never leaves anything out on the field. However, he told his teammates last weekend he had decided to stop playing First Grade. For this week's Sunday Profile, Lloyd looked back on a sterling career and talked about why he's decided to call it a day.I've been playing prems for Goonellabah for probably the last eight years, and I've decided to hang up the boots as I've got a young family now, and another one on the way early next year. I'm not getting any younger as well, so I thought it was time. The time feels right for me.I've been playing football, since I was five years old. I played a lot of my juniors in Sydney for a club called Eschol Park. When I moved up here about 13 or 14 years ago, Goonellabah was the local team, so I decided to sign up with them.I was always probably first division in juniors and then when I came up I just didn't know anyone basically. I did meet a few blokes before I signed up to soccer up here through work and they were playing in thirds so decided to go in with those guys and they have become really good mates of mine.I had a good four or so years playing third grade. As my mates got a bit older they left so I decided to have shot at the prems and, through a bit of hard work and determination, made the squad. I've been playing in the prems side since then and captained the boys this year as well, which is a really proud moment for myself personally.Lloyd scoring against Rovers. PHOTO: Supplied.I've always loved being outside. I love all sorts of sports. I love rugby league as well but I guess growing up mum and dad put me into soccer and I just had a knack for it straight away. I just loved it. There's nothing better than running around out there with your teammates, going through tough times, good times, wins, losses. Mentally and physically it's good for you. Goonellabah have always been good to me ever since I moved up here, so I've always really enjoyed giving back to them over the years as well.Football is a massive part of my life. I look forward to it every weekend. I still get nervous running out on Saturdays. I'll always play. Football will always be a part of my life. It's taught me valuable life lessons and I've met great mates.The Goonellabah Football Club has always been great to me, not just the players I've played with but also the coaches. I've had a few different coaches through the years and they've all really helped me improve my game, and taught me valuable life lessons. Even from the bar staff to management, all the way down. It's just a great family club. I'll always give back to Goonellabah when I can. As long as I'm in the area, I'll always be a part of them. That's for sure.I've always played up front in a forward roll striker type role. I've never been a world beater but when I play I've always prided myself on putting my heart into it. My nickname is “110 Per Cent”, and I guess the boys gave me that nickname because I train hard and when I run out I always try and give it my best, whether we're up three-nil or down three-nil. I always play to the final whistle and I guess I'm respected in that regard.Looking back, we had some tough times back in 2013 and 2014 when we really struggled. We had to battle relegation there for around two years but we managed to stay up. We had a really young side and even though it was a tough time, it was still something I'll look back on as a time where we had to fight and dig deep and keep the club going and give back to the club, which was really nice and we managed to stay up.Scoring the equaliser against Bangalow and then winning in a penalty shoot out to make the grand final in 2016. PHOTO: Supplied.We got through there and rebuilt through 2015 and then into 2016, we won the comp, by five points. So we won the minor premiership. We had a really good coach then, Brendan Logan. He's become a really good mate of mine as well. He really helped take my game to another level that year, which was really good. We won the comp that year and made the grand final but unfortunately lost. That's football I guess. That year was very enjoyable for sure.Lloyd and John Eakin, who was captain at the time and is now coach, with the minor premiership trophy in 2016. PHOTO: Supplied.I'm always trying to just push myself to the next limit. As I said, I've probably never had the greatest of skill sets but I've always just kept my spot just due to really hard work and determination. I'd like to think I'm a big voice in the team and so the boys do look up to me as well. I like to pick them up with me as we play. I like to play an aggressive style of football sometimes as well. Maybe I get the odd card here and there, but I guess that's like anyone when you play that way.The way I like to look at it is, for players like us in the local area, prems is the biggest stage we get to play at. We're not going to be going down and playing A League. So if this is the highest you're going to play, you might as well just give everything you've got. That's the way I've always looked at it definitely.Goonellabah after winning the minor premiership in 2016. PHOTO: Supplied.I guess it's a bit sad to be retiring, but I feel the time's right. At the end of the day, I've got a young family now and they come first. The body's not getting any younger. Recovery can be a bit harder as well. The time just feels right for me.I’m not going to stop playing. I'll go down a couple of grades. I'll continue to play for Goonellabah as long as I can basically. As I get older I might look into coaching some juniors and going down that path. I've always prided myself on being a good club man so I'll always give back to Goonellabah where I can.In the meantime, we've still got a job to do this year and I'm really confident we can get into the finals. Give it a red hot crack. It would be nice to go out with a competition.

Former Lismore High student Tom Brown, 20, had a career highlight as part of the NSW team that stormed through the Under-21s National Championships held at Goonellabah last month. For this week’s Sunday Profile, Tom talked about this significant homecoming, what it was like donning the green and gold for the first time for the Australian under-21s team and his goal of someday playing for the Kookaburras. I was about four years old when I first started playing hockey. My older brother started playing and I just got dragged along and we started playing together. My whole family has always played hockey. Both my parents played and my uncles and pop played. I don't how much further it went back than that.The thing I love the most about hockey is the camaraderie. Our club at home, Coraki, is just like a family. All my mates and stuff there that I’ve grown up with, they're not just my friends. They're almost brothers. I love that.It's been the same since I've moved to Sydney. The club I play with now, Ryde, they're exactly the same. It's an awesome family club.I also like the fact that you're not getting tackled by 120kg fellas every week like you are in footie. There's plenty of running. It's an exciting game. There's lots of different facets to the skills and you have to adapt and change. There's always something you can get better at, different ways you can approach the game to make it more exciting. You never get bored with it.I've always dreamed of playing for Australia since I was a little fella. I think I was about 12 when I made my first NSW team, in the under 13s. It was the best thing ever. I was so excited. I couldn't get enough of it.We were driving home and I said that's it, that's really what I want to do. It’s been the dream since then.At that time I was one of the top players of my age group, and I thought this is cool I'll keep going with it, but it wasn't until I was 16 or 17 when I realised that this could be something serious if I really knuckled down and have a bit of a crack with it.Both my mum and dad have been big inspirations. Both my uncles have been in a big influence as well through the club. I always played with them when I was growing up and they always challenged me and pushed me to play harder.As far as coaches, Adrian McGrath was a big influence on me and Warren “Busta” Birmingham, who is a former Australian hockey player and from Coraki himself. Warren coached me since I was about 13 until I was 17 when I left Lismore. We developed a pretty strong relationship. We'd see each other pretty much every day for training and hockey and all that. We're still in contact. Whenever I make a team or something I'll send him a photo of the shirt and say thanks mate, I really appreciate everything. It's still going a long way what he did for me. Adrian's the same and all the club the coaches I had when I was growing up, like Robbie Powell. The hours that they all put in to get everyone to enjoy it and play at different levels is amazing. Everyone succeeds in different ways and I was just lucky to go as well as I did, I guess.I’ve got to give big thanks to Coraki Hockey Club, Lismore High School and everyone. All the support I've had from up there is awesome.Playing in the Under-21s National Championships in Lismore last month was unreal. It was so cool. I'd never played at that level in Lismore before. Just to have my family and mates around, to show them what it's like; how quick and how good it is. It's just a different level of hockey.It's a different game. It's so quick. You can't be off the ball half a centimetre because the other team's got it then. To show everyone in Lismore the level that it is was pretty special, definitely.We won it too. Going through undefeated was bloody special. To celebrate up there and share that moment with everyone and my family was pretty cool.I've had a few trips overseas for hockey. I went to India at the start of last year with the NSW Institute of Sport. It was more of a development tour for the institute but it was sensational to go to a country where they live for hockey like that. Obviously cricket's huge, but hockey's a big sport there too. We played in front of 33,000 people in a little country town and every single one of them was trying to jump the fence and get on the field and get signatures and photos. It was unreal. Getting the opportunity two months ago to play for Australia with the under-21s in an eight nations tournament in Spain was obviously pretty special as well. It was a week long tournament and we played five or six games. The quality of hockey over there and the different styles of the countries we played was awesome. We finished fourth. We were unlucky to lose the bronze medal match in a shootout, but regardless of where we finished just to play was awesome. That was the first time I've played for Australia. When I was 16 I got picked in the Australian all-schools team for the Australian under 16s, who were touring South Africa, but I pulled out to go to the under-18s national championships playing for NSW. That was my first selection but Spain was my first time playing.It's hard to describe what putting on the green and gold for the first time is like. I was just walking around the hotel room with the singlet on, I couldn't stop. I was loving it.It only really hit me when I was out there at the first game listening to the national anthem. Standing out there, in that short span of time while the anthem's playing, it was pretty special. I reflected on all things I'd done and the work that I'd put in and the people who had played a part. It was just surreal, really.That was definitely my biggest moment so far. I was a late call in to that trip, one of the boys got injured which was unfortunate. But yeah, it was unreal.I ended up in Sydney because I was offered a scholarship to the NSW Institute of Sport when I was 17 and I've stayed on since. They offer scholarships in yearly rounds and I have kept getting them, which has been nice.It was a tough decision to take the scholarship but I decided to move out of home, which was huge. Not a lot of players do that. A lot of them are country-based and only move down once they finish school. But I moved down to live with my aunty and uncle and finished school down here at a school called Model Farm. An awesome place. Awesome year. It was a tough year obviously but everyone was really supportive.Since then I've started university studying exercise science and moved out with a mate of mine and I'm just going along, playing with Ryde. They're awesome, they're just like a family and always looking after my best interests and being supportive.Obviously, my main goal at the moment is getting a spot on the national team.Everyone’s path to playing for Australia is different. The ideal path for me from now would be to get picked for the NSW under-21s again next year. There's also a new league that they've developed this year called Hockey One which is the old Australian Hockey League format. They've made it a bit similar to Big Bash in the cricket and I've been picked in a squad called NSW Pride so ideally I'd make that team and if I don't there's an opportunity to go in a draft type system. From there, I’d look to gain selection into the national junior squad or the development squad and then eventually make my way into the Kookaburras if possible. But there's a lot of hard work in between there and where I am now.MAIN PHOTO: Shez Napper Images

Goolmangar’s Jonas Widjaja has started up a new enterprise, Fair Game, taking venison from pest deer that has been professionally culled and putting it in the kitchens of high end restaurants and Northern Rivers homes. It’s a brilliant business idea but for Jonas the social, environmental and ethical benefits are just as important. My business Fair Game is all about using meat that would otherwise be wasted. The deer are being shot regardless - because they are a massive pest to farmers, damage the environment, and a threat to public safety - but they're not all being picked up to use. They should be used. For me, preventing that waste is very important but it’s also about supporting the farmers and reducing the pressure on the environment.Feral deer are a big problem for NSW farmers. PHOTO: Supplied/NSW Farmers.There are a lot of farmers out west, where the deer populations are the largest, who are already struggling with drought. In order to keep their cattle alive and fed, they have to control the numbers of deer that are breaking into their properties and eating their pasture. The government does culls as well, and a lot of that is based around minimising the environmental damage that the deer do. They are an invasive hoofed animal and they eat vegetation right down to the base which doesn't really allow the vegetation to grow back and they rub the bark off tree trunks, which is basically like ring barking the trees as well. More recently there's been quite a lot of concern about public safety as the deer move closer to the coast and cause traffic accidents. They're probably Australia's fastest growing pest animal and they're very difficult to control.My day job is I'm a primary school teacher, and a landscape architect but I have also been a recreational hunter for a few years. I was a bit older when I started hunting. I realized that as a city kid I had absolutely no connection to the food that I was eating. I would see lamb being really cute, and eat lamb shanks, and not put any real connection between the two. I think that's a really common thing for a lot of people who buy packaged cuts at the supermarkets. We can't even really tell what the cut of meat is or where it comes from on the animal.I decided that I'd start hunting and started getting really interested what a family friend was doing at their game meat restaurant in Auckland, Cazador. I started hunting with them and they kind of shaped my current values. Dariush Lolaiy is a top chef in New Zealand and a game meat specialist. PHOTO: Supplied.Dariush Lolaiy runs Cazador these days. He's my age and the second generation to run the restaurant. I really, really respect what he's doing. The family has always been nose to tail eaters and they always made things out of the hides. They fish and only take what they can eat.A big part of the tourism industry in New Zealand is game hunting. Rich Americans will come and shoot deer and then they'll go home but a lot of that meat isn't taken back. My friends would use whatever meat they could in the restaurant and then donate the rest.That's kind of where the whole idea of Fair Game started. I originally wanted to start up a non-profit which would help people who had excess meat, through hunting and the tourism industry in New Zealand, find avenues to donate that meat. Partway through that idea I realized that I'd probably be able to do more if I was a successful business owner rather than a non-profit. Also, when I moved here to Australia the whole idea changed a little bit as well because the problem is much larger in Australia in terms of the numbers of deer that are shot and left on the ground and because of the agricultural and environmental issues. So I was thinking more about how I could support those two avenues as well as try and get this meat onto plates.My internal drive is definitely more of a social drive. I do want what I do to help people struggling with food security, and I've started these discussions with quite a few people and I'm getting there with what it might look like. At the moment, the important thing for me is to really get people to understand that venison is out there and is largely left on the ground and is an extremely highly nutritious and very healthy, lean red meat. It’s a really high quality product. I've got some of the top chefs using it and really loving it. Fair Game sells a wide variety of cuts of venison. PHOTO: Supplied.Like any other meat, each cut needs to be treated differently. Low and slow for your shanks, shoulder and neck and then your fast cuts come off the back strap and tenderloin. You can just sear it on the outside and then put it in the oven for very short time, four or five minutes, and you get that really nice blushing on the inside. You really don't want to cook it more than medium rare. What people don't necessarily know is that the leg cuts, which they call the denver legs, that's the top side knuckle, silver and rump, they're all fast cuts as well and because I age the mate, you actually have a product that you can use like you would a back strap, and get a fairly similar quality and tenderness and flavor.Fair Game also does other meat products such as sausages. PHOTO: Supplied.I've been in business for three or four months now. I'm probably doing around about eight to 12 deer per week and I'm keen to grow.At the moment there are a few local shops that supply it. The Bay Grocer in Byron and Suffolk Park Spar and locally in Lismore you can get it at Spar in Wyrallah Rd, the Bexhill Store, Secret Chef Deli, the Goolmangar General Store and the Ethical and Sustainable Produce stall at the markets.I'm having a launch event coming up at Mavis's Kitchen in Uki on August 25 and I'm bringing over that friend who has really shaped my values, Dariush Lolaiy. He's one of New Zealand's top chefs so he’s going to come and talk about venison and put on an amazing meal for everyone that comes. The requirements during harvesting are quite strict in terms of food safety and ethical harvesting. It starts off with a contract with a commercially licensed game shooter who has the correct type of vehicle that can be audited for sanitary and hygiene standards. They have to have wash down and hand washing stations and the hunters are required to have a Cert IV in game harvesting. There's also certain requirements that make sure that the meat once it gets to the plate is safe and that includes meat inspection, temperature control, the way that the animal is shot or harvested.The good thing for me is that whenever a deer comes to me from a commercially licensed shooter, I can see whether it was killed to ethical standards. If it's not shot and killed instantly, there will be damage on the body, which I would be able to see. And at that point I would tell these guys it's against the law for me to take this. That has never happened, which means that these guys are only shooting when they know that they've got an ethical kill which I think is really important.There are strict ethical and food safety standards that must be adhered to when harvesting wild deer. PHOTO: Supplied.There's no live transport. There's no stress to the animal, and that actually comes through in the tenderness of the meat as well because the adrenaline that rushes through due to stress does taint the meat. So you get a really high quality products because it's an instant, and stress-free system.A lot of people disagree with the current meat industry and some practices. Our region is actually really good in terms of regenerative farming. A lot of people are trying to make changes in terms of what they're doing. Even people who have made a decision not to eat meat, when they find out what I'm doing, whether or not they're going to choose to eat the meat that I supply, I often get a really positive response. They say, "I think what you're doing is a really good thing, it's a good change.”To find out more about Fair Game head to the Fair Game website or Facebook page.

Bringing together a unique skill set drawing from the fields of performance, art and education, Claudie Frock aka Peggie Popart has become a fixture at the Lismore Regional Gallery as a unique kind of tour guide to the world of art.My official position here at the Lismore Regional Gallery is I'm the learning officer or education officer. I work with children and families and run education programs around those, but also community groups, tertiary education as well, and secondary and primary. It's really about being able to support people to learn more about the art exhibitions and public programs. The thing that is so great about having a role like that is that children don't bring themselves to a gallery, so they'll always have a parent or a grandparent or an uncle or a friend. If you make a gallery attractive to children, then you are increasing the audience and it means that more people will be coming into the gallery and having great experiences because they feel comfortable to be there. We try to make it a very welcoming place for people. When I finished high school I studied performance at the University of Western Sydney, but only for a couple of years and then I went traveling but I continued performing and in Tasmania I met up with a group of women and we performed together. So I have a long history performing and working for different theatre companies. I’ve worked for NORPA, for Roundabout Theatre, the Greenhouse, educational theatre and the Clown Doctors... but as well as doing that, I also did an art degree partially at Sydney College of the Arts and also at Southern Cross University. I came to Lismore from living in Newtown, to check out the university, and was like, this place is paradise. That was around 1994.I kind of went back and forth to Sydney a couple of times. I did my honors in printmaking, paper making and sculptural installation at Southern Cross University, all that time still performing, and then I went traveling to Japan studied papermaking there. I’ve worked for REDinc for the past 19 years and still work there two days a week as the arts coordinator for their studio arts program. Working with artists with a disability is a huge passion of mine and we have some amazing artists working out of that studio. Lucas Wright has just recently received the Bundanong Trust Residency, which is incredibly prestigious and fantastic for him. That's a pretty long enduring relationship I've had with that workplace and with a lot of those artists. I reckon I would've known Lucas for 15 years and seeing him grow as an artist has been really exciting.When I came back from Japan I decided to do a Dip Ed [Diploma of Education] and because I had this toolbox full of all these different skills like performance, education and art, the gallery actually asked me if I could develop a character for them. They didn't have a big space in the old gallery, so they asked me to develop a character that does tours and small activities with the kids. That’s when Peggy Popart was born. I developed Peggy just on that request and since then she's been just about the best thing in my whole life. Seriously, just fantastic. I thought it needed to be a character that is playful but slightly bossy because it was a small space and if you get a big group of kids close to art, you need to be able to let them have fun but not run riot. So she's kind of absurdly bossy and she's an expert on art, she’s a little bit magical, a little bit sci-fi, so she has a time machine and can travel back through time and space and meet different artists. She also has a banana phone that she can call artists on. Peggy Popart running a workshop. PHOTO: Supplied/Natsky.The idea was to develop this character that could be kind of more than just a tour guide. She's a very special tour guide.My favorite kind of tour guide are those ‘50s tour guides with their little signs and she's almost a little bit like an airline hostess. So that's how she came about. These days I do tours, I develope activities and worksheets, I liaise with schools, run workshops and that sort of thing. Lots of different things to engage the schools and families. My main approach is to really allow the young people to lead. Whenever I do a workshop, I'll have a basic kind of skeleton of an idea, but I really want the young people to lead the activity. The Reggio Emilia educational philosophy is that children already have all the languages to describe and understand, but we often tell them that they don't. The languages include speaking or singing or dancing or using their hands to make things - these are all ways to be in the world and describe and understand the world. That is probably the strongest focus I've had in terms of an educational sort of philosophy.We have all the different levels of education come in. For example, Lismore Preschool wanted to have a whole term of activities. It's almost like we're opening ourselves up to be a bit of a precinct that's open to all the different educational groups to be able to use. I also do monthly Peggy Popart tours on the second Sunday of the month, which are free and open to the general public and they always have a Auslan (Australian sign language) interpreter. It’s very important to me that we have strong focus on accessibility. When Peggy Popart first came we got an Auslan interpreter. I've got quite a few friends in the Deaf community and that sort of came out of having an interpreter and meeting more Deaf people. I also help Sigrid our Auslan Tour Guide organize the Auslan led tours. I think that having access to a cultural facility like this is incredibly important for everybody, but especially for children because if you start early then they can really start to understand the different cultural perspectives in the world. I think that's really important, particularly these days where we are in the world where people can sometimes be very black and white and unaccepting of different cultures. That's the biggest thing - to just understand - and also to experience things through their senses. It's very important. I think that's really grounding and it’s important for them to understand that it's okay for them to have a feeling about something. It’s also good for the parents because they'll hear their children talking about something from a very sort of basic level of color, texture, composition and not feel as afraid to maybe to talk about their own experience of art.I still practice my own art. I have a studio underneath the Northern Rivers Conservatorium. I'm painting work at the moment for a show. Hopefully it'll be in September at the Silver Cloud Studios. They're setting up a gallery at the moment.The show is with Leona Bolt, Heidi Tansy and Heather Jessup - three women I went to uni with who I'm still really connected to. We went on a trip last year Tenterfield to climb Bald Rock and we all decided that we wanted to have a show together that is in part inspired by that landscape out there. I've also been working with Roundabout Theatre a little bit again. We went up to Bingara to the Orange Festival where I was a giant snail called Helix. Helix is very slow and has a huge suit so that you can only see my face and the huge suit is connected to a big metal caravan/snail shell. It's a little bit like a very small car. I pulled that along and my human friend feeds me lettuce and he just talked to people. That's pretty fun.I'm studying Auslan at Tafe. There's a free year long course at Tafe. I decided that I wanted to do it because there's a lot of Deaf people who are coming to the gallery now and wanted to be able to talk to them - and my Deaf friends - in their language. It's such a beautiful language. I'm such a visual person so I’m enjoying it.I’m pretty happy with the way things have worked out. It’s pretty sweet. I do work really hard and I'm really passionate about art and education and also providing free opportunities for families who may not necessarily be able to pay for things - that's why we always keep Peggy Popart free - and because I think that it's also about creating aspirational opportunities for our communities to see that there is more in the world and there's some interesting experiences and adventures to be had. I feel very grateful. This is just the funnest job. The other day we just got to build a replica of the Hannah Cabinet out of cardboard boxes with a bunch of kids. Oh my goodness, just so much fun. I really enjoy being playful, but I also I take it seriously. I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily a frivolous person. I want what I do to be good quality. That's what I really get out of it. I want to make good quality experiences for people in the community. I'm aspirational for my community. That's what kind of drives me. I want to bring everybody along and have a good experience. I find that very satisfying. 

Five years ago, Jo Nemeth decided to live without money. Now Jo has moved in with her best mate Sharon Brodie in Lismore to help reduce her resource consumption and together eliminate their household's use of fossil fuels and also has founded a group that meets monthly in Lismore to help others do the same. Before I decided to live without money I was living a fairly average Australian lifestyle, which to me, as a global citizen, is fairly privileged lifestyle. I had a good life. I was working in a really good job that I really enjoyed as a community development worker in Casino at a neighborhood center. I just was working like most people, trying to make ends meet to pay the bills, but even with a reasonably good wage that was very stressful I was also spending a lot of time reading about all of the things that were happening around the world: the oceans being overfished, child slavery... the fact that things that I was buying were affecting and impacting people on the other side of the planet that I would never meet. It wasn't just climate change back in 2014. That wasn't even such a big thing in my mind. It was more resource consumption. That sort of stuff. I was reading a lot about that and it was really getting to me - on top of just trying to make ends meet.That all culminated around my birthday in 2014. I was reading a book written by a couple who rode their bikes up and down the east coast of Australia and in that book they mentioned people who had chosen to live without money - for various different reasons. I kind of twigged then and thought, oh, hang on a minute, that might be an answer. I just couldn't put the idea down after that. I read about other people who were doing it and decided to do it myself modelled off a guy called Mark Boyle who lived in the UK for three years without money. That was my answer to removing myself as a large part as part of the problem, not necessarily being part of the solution, but at least I felt like I wasn't going to be contributing if I wasn't buying stuff all the time. I decided I had to go without money because I don't trust myself. Even if I have a little bit of money, I will buy things that have impacts that I'm not necessarily happy with because I don't have a lot of willpower. I just thought it's easier not to have any money. So much easier. You don't even have to think about the choices. It just takes all of that weight off. I made the decision and then it took me about a year to wind down my old life. I needed to find somewhere to live, and I did that pretty easily. I approached some friends who lived down the road in Koonorigan where I was living. They had a farm and I knew they had a big veggie garden and lots of kids and were flat out and barely able to do all the things on their farm. So I went to them and I said, hey, I need somewhere to live cause I want to do this social experiment. They said, sure, no worries. Living without money can be hard work. PHOTO: Supplied.Once that was sorted, it all kind of fell into place, but in that year I had to extricate myself from the relationship that I was in. My daughter was still finishing high school, so I had to work out what to do there and to make sure she was set up okay. I ended up at the end of 2014, I quit my job, closed my bank accounts, got rid of my car, got rid of a lot of stuff and just settled in on the property at Koonorigan to start with.Jo with her tiny-house-wagon. PHOTO: Supplied.It's been four years now and I've done a few different things. I've moved around a bit and tried different ways of living without money. I did a house sit in Byron and I have a little tiny-house-wagon thing that I had at two different places in North Lismore. It's now at out at Goolmangar, out of the flood zone at last. So while I live here in Lismore most of the time I also have a country house - the wagon. I can come and go between this place and my other friends out there. I help them out when I'm there and I help Sharon out when I'm here and that's kind of how it works.At the first farm, sorting out food was easy because they already had an established veggie garden and I'd already helped them out a little bit. I just stepped into the role of caretaker of this big veggie patch and I started growing my own little patch as well. I built a little shack out of secondhand materials, which I used the last bit of my money to finish off. When I was thinking of going without money, I did have concerns about not having enough food to eat. There was that survival instinct that kicked in. Like, how am I going to have enough food to eat? But actually one person needs very little in the way of food. I had an abundance of food from their garden plus my garden. When I visited friends they would feed me and I'd help them out as well at the same time. It's always this kind of win-win, give and take. Each place I've gone, I've tried different things. I've volunteered at the markets in Lismore here in exchange for some organic food. I did a similar thing when I house sat in Byron. I worked at a soup kitchen and got some meals there. I've done some bin diving, but not very much. I haven't really needed too, because it's quite easy to grow enough food around here. Shelter has been the wagon and the little shack that I built at Koonorigan and now I've got a little sleeping loft that I built in Sharon's shed. I make a little nest for myself wherever I go.I don't call what I do bartering because to me bartering is a direct exchange where you make an agreement. I work this amount of hours for you in return for this, this and this. And to me that's very much still a monetary kind of mindset. It's thinking in those financial terms. I try to not do that and I haven't really had to do that very much. Basically, what I do is I just help people out and they help me out. It's like we all do with our friends and family anyway. There isn't that kind of bartering mentality. It's just give and take, a natural flow and that's how it's worked for me. I just try to be really helpful and if I'm really helpful, people want to help me out and help me to meet my needs. We really don't need very much to meet our basic needs. It's not very challenging. The biggest challenge at the start was giving up my relationship because it was a long term relationship and he wasn't interested in doing this and he has gone on to live a very different life, making lots of money. So that was the hardest thing. Then that first year it was challenging having to hand wash my clothes because at that time I was wearing jeans - because I already had jeans - and I was working in the mud in them and hand washing in buckets. That was really difficult. Since then, I've learned to not wear jeans when I'm working in the mud, that kind of thing. And at Sharon's, I do the washing for the household, so I just chuck my clothes in the washing machine as well. Initially the first few times that I came to town when I'd given up money, there was that automatic reflex to go into a shop to buy something. I had to just reframe everything and go, actually, that's not a possibility for me anymore. And that was more surreal than difficult. It was just like I was living in a slightly different world.If there are particular things that I feel that I need or would like, I just wait for my birthday or Christmas. When I was living on my own, before I moved here, I would supplement my diet with rice and oats so I asked for rice and oats as birthday and Christmas presents. Last Christmas I asked for seeds. Sharon and my daughter Amy paid for about $50 worth of seeds for me. So I've got a stockpile of seeds for the next few years, which is fantastic.Sharon bought this house just over a year ago and I was helping her out beforehand, so I kind of just ended up here helping to unpack and stuff. It kind of just organically unfolded. I don't remember us having an actual conversation. Sharon and I have been best friends for a long time. We've been very close ever since our kids were in nappies, that's 22 years, and we've always been supportive of one another.Sharon and Jo with the first eggs from the chickens at their new home together in Lismore. PHOTO: Supplied.She supported me heaps in the past and I've supported her as well, so this was just an extension of that really. Up until recently there hasn't been any real concrete arrangement. She said stay and I said I'd build myself sleeping loft out there and I'll grow food. She said, I've got a whole yard. I don't know what to do with, so just go for it. I cook a lot and I clean a bit and I wash the clothes and I look after the chickens and I do all that kind of stuff that Sharon's too busy to do and she goes to work and does a great job. It's a symbiotic relationship.Recently we've moved into this phase where we're starting this project where we want to get off fossil fuels. Because we're both very concerned about climate emergency, we have decided as a household to be a bit of a showcase. This is kind of my agenda, but also meeting Sharon's concern and her desire to do something. Together we've formulated this plan to be off fossil fuels in the next three and a half years, which is a massive undertaking but we figured that we're a regular suburban house, if we can do it or get close to there, then we can have other people come and see how we did it and learn from our mistakes and then hopefully that will influence other people to reduce their fossil fuel consumption as well.Our plan is just to think about everything that uses fossil fuels, either directly or indirectly, and try and stop that. It's pretty simple, except that we understand that fossil fuels are in everything. Our society is completely built on the use of fossil fuels, so it's a huge challenge. I've been living that way now for four years anyway. That was part of getting off away from money. For Sharon, it's a steeper learning curve or a steeper challenge but she's up for it. We feel very despairing when we can't act. So this is our way of doing something. We're starting by getting rid of the gas in the house, that's the cooktop and the hot water system. Sharon immediately put solar panels on the roof when we moved here. Eventually the cars are going to go, so we've been doing lots of bike riding. We are reducing our consumption of new things. We're trying very hard not to buy anything new. Buying second hand is of course, okay. We're going to try and produce a lot of our own food or just use food that's grown very close to Lismore. Food is probably going to be the hardest thing because even though we can access quite a bit of food that's grown very close to Lismore, there is still fossil fuel use in the growing and creating of that.Even setting out at the beginning we're pretty sure we're not going to be able to be 100 per cent fossil fuel free of indirect use but we have to try, we have to do our very best. I don't think at this point in time with the climate crisis as it is that we really have much of a choice. I think we're all going to have to do it at some point. We're just starting now.This is what the RetroSuburbia group is about. David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture, wrote this book called RetroSuburbia. Basically it's about permaculture, but permaculture aimed at the suburbs, so for people like us, using what we already have available to reduce our footprints, reduce our demand for fossil fuels and reduce our resource use. The book is like a guide. The idea of the local RetroSuburbia group that I started a few months ago is that I don't want to have to do all the research and come up with all the answers myself. There are people in Lismore who are doing very similar things and who have some of the answers. So let's get together and throw around ideas together and not reinvent the wheel. There's a few of us who are getting together, and just really talking practical solutions about how we can reduce our demand on fossil fuels.Anybody can come. It's the third Saturday of the month from 10am to 12am at the Lismore City Library. We had quite a few people come last time. I'd like to have knowledgeable people come along so I can learn from them but it's good to have people who are just starting out come along so they can get some ideas about how to start reducing fossil fuel use.One of the things that my mum taught me years ago when I was young was to learn the difference between what is a want and what is a need. That's something I keep coming back to. If it's something that I just desire, then if I can let that go, that makes a massive impact. I think that we inadvertently do a lot of damage through our consumption of things that we just desire.I think an important thing that I'm learning is the need for collaboration and to work as part of a team. Sharon and I have the benefit of her working and me not, so we can collaborate really well together. I help her to get off fossil fuels and she helps me to get off fossil fuels. If you're just one person it's very hard to do that.A lot of people, their response to hearing that I live without money, the negative response I get, is that I'm just bludging. It took me a long time to get out of that mindset as well myself because that's our culture. You can't depend on anyone else because if you do you're a bludger. I still have that message in my head sometimes and it was very strong at the beginning. I didn't feel like I was a bludger, but I felt guilty because I felt like I was on a constant holiday when everybody around me wasn't and so that left me feeling guilty. But then I realized that actually we're always dependent on other people. It's just that when we use money, the dependencies are spread globally. People and ecosystems around the world meet our needs. We have money as an exchange. My dependency is very much face to face. I'm dependent on Sharon at the moment and she's depending on me. It's a reciprocal thing, but I know what my footprint is. I know what my impacts are with Sharon and vice versa. So that's the power of working like this as a face to face collaboration and taking money away. I've come to understand that I'm not really bludging, I'm actually just having my needs met super locally.The Lismore RetroSuburbia group will meet next Saturday, July 20, at the Lismore City Library from 10am until noon. You can read more about Jo's journey on her blog JoLowImpact.

The memorial service at a crowded St Paul's Presbyterian Church on Wednesday for Lismore's Jim Roder - who passed away on May 31 - brought on more laughter than tears, though there were some of those too. That was a testament to Jim's reputation as a prankster and larrakin. Jim the bulldozer driver from Lismore, as he would often introduce himself, was also a champion water skier, a licensed pilot and a dedicated volunteer firefighter for 40 years. Above all he was a loving husband to wife Fay, father and grandfather.The following is a wonderful eulogy delivered by his son, Tony, at Wednesday's service that tells the story of a great member of our community.Chapter One: Early life and WorkJim Roder was born in the family home in Woodburn, the second of three brothers and a second generation Italian from the New Italy settlement south of Woodburn.His father, Joe, grew bananas on land close to New Italy. Jim attended Woodburn Central School, or Woodburn University as he called it, but wasn’t really interested in school and left at age 15 to work with his dad on the banana farm for five or six years.One day a council bulldozer came out to their farm to build a dam and the operator gave Jim a go at driving it (I don’t think that would be allowed nowadays) and after one go he decided that’s what he wanted to do. He sold his car and used all his savings to put a deposit down on his own second hand dozer.During the '60s he worked long and hard building floodway channels in the lower Richmond and sand mining along Airforce Beach, eventually upgrading to a dozer with hydraulics rather than cables.Jim also worked nights running the projectors at the Evans Head picture theatre with mum ushering movie goers to their seats in the theatre. One of my earliest memories is standing in my cot next to dad in the projection room watching him change the giant movie reels on the giant projectors and watching the movies through a little peep hole. I had the best seat in the house and he was my hero from then on.In the early '70s, Jim was hired to work on developing the Ocean Shores township, building the roads and the golf course (still my favourite course anywhere). As our family had settled in Lismore, Jim chose to commute to Ocean Shores, leaving home well before daylight and getting home after dark - such was his strong work ethic. I remember a couple of times helping dad and his mechanic mate, Smithy, working through the night to fix the dozer after a breakdown (I learnt some colourful new words on those nights) then Jim would be back to work for the day without any sleep.After almost a decade, Ocean Shores was complete and Jim began working for the RTA on improving the Pacific Highway between Grafton and Woolgoolga. On his first day on the job, the RTA engineer arrived, saw the size of Jim’s bulldozer and promptly told Jim: "Sorry we will need a machine twice that size for this job!"So Jim said: "OK, I’ll do a day's work for free and if you’re not satisfied then I’ll leave." The engineer returned the next day and said: "OK you’re hired, now take your machine and hide in the bush for three days while we catch up with what you’ve done!"In the mid '80s, Jim started Roder/Price Constructions, building subdivsions around the Lismore region, buying more machinery which was risky, but becoming a successful business. He taught himself some basic surveying skills on the job and eventually built up his own business, employing up to eight workers at a time. This meant long days at work and then nights at home doing quotes and pays with mum, often working until midnight.He finally sold his business in and settled into retirement after over 40 years of hard work.Chapter Two: Family Dad was always a loving and dedicated family man, father and grandfather.In the early '70s, he bought his prized possession, a ski boat which he named Lil Dib, which was his nickname for his beloved daughter Kim.We spent many happy weekends as kids learning from an expert on how to water ski on the Richmond at Woodburn, staying at Nana and Pops house on the river.There was a memorable family trip to the Murray River, with aunties, uncles and grandparents on a house boat together, stopping at most of the wineries along the river. There was a lot of wine tasting on that trip. There was also a kerfuffle among the aunties one day when dad threw me overboard as a 10-year- old - but he knew I was a good swimmer.When Jim began work at Ocean Shores, the extended family would spend three weeks every Christmas at Ma Rings beachhouse in New Brighton. These annual holidays went on for almost 20 years. A big tent would go up in the backyard for me and my mates and the house would be full of relatives. Everyone was welcome and we always had the best time surfing, fishing and playing backyard cricket. One constant was all the uncles had to do a "garbage run" every couple of days but everyone knew pretty quickly that they didn't get past the golf club.Of course, Jim’s other pride and joy was his little slice of heaven, his little paddock on the river, the Ponderosa. He was a besotted grandfather and he turned it into a children's paradise for his grandkids and his friends kids to enjoy. A treehouse wasn’t enough - it had to have a flying fox as well - so he built them. A little beach to ski from wasn’t enough - it had to have a waterslide into the river - so he built it.He grew bananas, oranges and vegetables and loved to escape to the paddock to relax in his later years. Many hours of fun has been had at the Ponder by young and old alike.In his late 40s, dad did what I believe was his greatest achievement. He was always strong and handy with manual work but having left Woodburn University at 15, he had only ever studied basic maths many years before. He loved aeroplanes and the idea of flying so he set his mind to gaining his pilot's licence.He spent many hours at night studying the maths and physics involved in flying a plane and he eventually did it. He became a pilot. So there were new adventures for his grandkids to be had-going flying with Pop. What an amazing man.Chapter Three: CommunityMost of you here today would know of at least some of the work dad has done within the community over the years.He has done the earthworks for a number of sports fields around Lismore, including the Thistles soccer fields many years ago, Barrow Lane field at the Italo Club and the South Lismore sports fields. Lismore City Council recognised this by naming the fields behind Trinity College as Jim Roder Oval. Dad would often say to mum – “let’s go for a drive down to the oval and make sure they haven’t taken my name down”. It was a great source of pride to him.He used his boat in a number of floods, especially the big '74 flood, to help evacuate elderly residents from their homes.Dad was also pretty chuffed when he was included as a runner in the Sydney Olympics torch relay. He was a bit disappointed he didn’t get a Lismore run but he ran proudly down the main street of Byron Bay holding the torch high.Up until a couple of years ago, dad’s love of the river drew him back to take up rowing. He enjoyed his Saturday mornings cruising peacefully down the river - except for the day someone forgot to look where they were going and ran into the Ballina Street bridge, dislocating a shoulder.Even though he was certainly no expert rower, dad still wanted to help out whenever he could, so he volunteered to coach high school students each week for a couple of years during their sport sessions, which he also enjoyed immensely.Of course, a huge part of our lives was dad's 40 years of service as a volunteer fireman. He absolutely treasured his time in the fire brigade and the deep and lasting friendships he and mum made with his firey mates and their partners.Oh so many nights we were woken at all hours of the night when those fire bells went off but no matter how long dad had been at work, he would always jump out of bed to go to a fire call.In the early days, first in Evans Head and then Lismore, he would jump up quickly and screech off down the road to try and be first to the fire, but as the years went by, he would get up a bit slower saying: "It’s probably another false alarm."There are far too many stories to tell here of the pranks dad pulled on his mates at the station and on their trips away every two years to all parts of the state for the fire demos. They would train hard a couple of nights a week and work out tactics (usually at the Civic Hotel). Dad would always brag about the teamwork and timing needed to get the hydrant in and the hoses out as fast as possible without a washout and one year the team even won the gold medal.Needless to say, he loved every minute of those 40 years fighting fires and spending time with his best mates.Chapter Four: LoveAs Aretha Franklin sang: Behind every great man, there has to be a great woman. Such is the case with mum and dad. It is a story of lasting love and respect for over 60 years, something that is rare in modern times.Mum and dad met at a dance in Woodburn, and started courting not long before dad become Australian water ski champion at slalom and jumps. He travelled to the world titles in Florida in 1957. This was a time when water skiing was glamorous and at its peak of popularity in America. Dad would finish 8th in the world at those titles which was pretty awesome for a boy from Woodburn. And from photos I’ve seen he was surrounded by some fairly attractive women.When the skiing was done, he took a trip up to check out New York with the other Aussie skiers. But dad told me more than once that he didn’t really enjoy that trip - despite all the glamour of America, he just wanted to come home to his new girl, mum.So he returned home and quickly became engaged. Mum and dad were married in March 1959 and I was born nine months later - they didn’t waste any time! Although they did wait another four years before my sister Kim was born.In the 60 years since, they have been inseparable. They worked together, starting at the Evans Head pictures. Mum did the paperwork for dad's business for many years while also working for some time at Trevan's and over 25 years at Parry’s Office Supplies. Dad always asked mum’s advice and guidance in any decisions.They were always together at any social event - often the last ones left standing on the dance floor at the end of the night.Their love for each other only grew stronger as the years went by. Dad needed mum by his side right to the very end.James Joseph Roder, you have had a life well lived. You have touched many people's lives. Ýou have been a beautiful husband, father and grandfather.Rest in peace dad.

Janelle Power, of Mary Vidler Bridal Gowns, has found that perfect dress for hundreds of Lismore brides-to-be - first as Mary Vidler’s assistant and then, for the past 15 years, as the owner of the Lismore business. Now she’s ready to pass on the baton.I started working at Mary Vidler Bridal Gowns after I finished school after my fourth year at Richmond River High School. I was walking up Warina Walk one day - the shop was in that arcade at that point - and I went in looking for a handbag to go to my cousin's wedding. That was in the old days when we matched handbags and shoes. While I was in there, we just struck up a conversation and Mary offered me a job. So I've worked for Mary since I was 16, on and off.I did nursing for 13 years in between. I came back to Lismore to bring the kids up in the country and ran into Mary again - this would be 31 years ago because my son's 31 - and I've been with her ever since. Fifteen years ago Mary retired and I decided that it was too good a business to let go to someone else, so it was my turn to take over.Mind you, we used to be really busy in those days because this was the only way girls shopped; they came in to view the dresses and try them on. There was no online buying. We had only just got an eftpos machine at that stage, so things have changed in the 15 years that I've taken over.We're still here and thankfully girls are still getting married and I still love my job, but I am 65 this year and it is time. I have to retire and I would like to hand the business over to someone who loves it as much as I do. There has got to be somebody out there. They don't have to sew. We do alterations here but they have to do that. Not every bridal shop does, some just sell dresses.I've met some lovely people over the years while working here. I find now that I'm getting them coming back with their daughters. One a little while ago, I did her wedding 20 years ago and she came back when she was getting married again. She's come back because she got her first dress here and she was happy with that.It's lovely. When everyone's happy with what they have got, you get to feel like you made that happen. I've received some lovely letters back from people and they send me photos of their weddings. I keep them all.I don't make dresses but I do alterations. Most people don’t fit perfectly into a wedding dress straight off, usually something has to be done to it. Most of them at least have to have a hem done. I don't know how girls buy online without trying a dress on. I'll never get to understand that.They also lose a big part of the fun of getting married. Trying on wedding dresses isn’t something you get to do every day. When I get them in the change room I don't let them out. I like them to try a little bit of everything so they can see what they look good in.A big part of what I provide is an ability to find a dress that the bride will feel happy in. A lot of girls come in with pictures on their phone saying: “I want a dress like this.” More times than not they go out with something totally different. They think they might look good in that dress, but when they try it on it doesn't necessarily look that good.I learned from Mary Vidler how to look at someone and work out what will suit them. I've learned so much from her. If you know your dresses well enough you should be able to go and pick a dress off the rack which will look beautiful on her. I've done that quite a few times.The most important thing is getting a connection with the girl. You have to win her confidence. You have to listen to what she's saying and go and get it. Try and give her what she wants but also be honest with her.A lot of larger fitting girls don't think they're going to look good in anything but you have to get the dress off the rack and get them into it before they even get to look. Say: “Come on, I want to see what you look like in this dress.” They're the ones you have to win over first and when they see themselves in that dress, then they trust you. They know then you've got a bit of an eye. Everyone's happy then. They come in with a sad face thinking: “Nothing's going to look good on me, I'm too big.” But they will look just as good in a wedding gown as a littler girl. I've proved it.My favourite thing about the job is buying the most beautiful wedding dresses, and I spend too much money, of course. The bridal houses used to come here a lot but nowadays you go to Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne where the bridal showings are and you go to all the different designers and pick out what you want. Which is the hardest job ever.I've learned to curb my spending a bit. When I took over from Mary I blew it. They're all beautiful gowns but you have to visualise what girls in Lismore will buy. Girls in Melbourne buy totally different to the country girls and you have to have the gowns that are more affordable than what they city girls buy. They spend thousands, but you can't do that here.After I took over 15 years ago, Mary stayed with me thank goodness. She's my right-hand girl. If I go away for a day, I always call on Mary. She's 85 this year and I couldn't do it without her because you can't leave a bridal shop in the hands of someone who doesn't know the dresses. She's good. She's always there for me.I'd like to sell the business to a girl with an eye for detail who's good with fashion. Someone who understands what looks good on girls. If you came in wanting a dress, she could just size you up - know what size you are for a start - and if your short what style of dress looks better on you than a tall girl. All that. There's girls out there doing TAFE courses in design, this is a perfect opportunity for them to practice what they're learning, and learn as they go. That's what I did. I learned from Mary.I'd love to mentor them. I wouldn't like to see them not do well.When I bought the business 15 years ago, it was my plan to do 15 years. I want to retire or downsize. It's a big shop and I'd like to do a bit of holidaying and do what people do when they retire.I wouldn't like to see the shop go to somebody who doesn't love it. Somebody has to take care of this shop because it's Lismore's heritage. It's been her for 64 years, in different shops around and even out at Wyrallah Rd, it's been out at Mary's house, and we've been back down her in Carrington Street over 20 years now, I'd say. I would like it to go to somebody who would respect it and respect the people who come in here.Anyone interested in taking over Mary Vidler Bridal Gowns can contact Janelle Power on 6621 6724 or 0414 809 931.

Clunes artist Katka Adams' first solo exhibition at the Lismore Regional Gallery opened earlier this month. It's called Coming Home and features portraits of migrants and refugees who have come to live in the Northern Rivers. Katka spoke to the Lismore App about her own story of coming to Australia as a refugee, how she became an artist and what she hopes to achieve with Coming Home.I was born in Prague in 1962. When I was six, there was the Prague Spring when the Communist Party was trying to bring in some reforms to make life better and easier for people, but then Russia sent in the tanks to suppress that and a lot of people left.Czechoslovaks carry their national flag past a burning tank in Prague. PHOTO: Supplied/Wikimedia Commons.We left in January '69 with fake passports and ended up in Vienna with a lot of other people waiting to find a place to go to. Australia sent over these films showing us how great Australia was, really advertising Australia. Things have changed so much now.I remember watching this amazing movie. It had palm trees swaying on these beaches and just beautiful sunshine. It looked really very lovely. They said: "Come, we want you, you're valuable. We want you to come to Australia." Mum didn't know much about Australia, but she loved the sun. She always loved the sunshine.My mother had divorced my father when I was two and she left Prague with this guy who she ended up having to marry to get to Australia because they didn't want single mothers at that time. They would only take families.I remember this wedding, which was in a Catholic church. There was a line of women and a line of men and a priest at the front marrying them. As they would get married, they would then pass the bouquet to the next person in line. It was like a queue of weddings because they all needed to get married to be able to come out to Australia. They just married whoever was there, basically. it wasn't really good for us because my stepfather was a criminal.We were processed through Bonegilla, which was the processing center for migrants in Wodonga in Victoria and mum was a bit disappointed. She just thought: “Where are the palm trees? This does not look like what was in the movie.”The Bonegilla Migrant Camp. PHOTO: Supplied.We were in these little army hearts, Nissen huts. It was very kind of spartan but clean and everything and very welcoming. They had crash English courses for people. There were dining rooms, bathroom blocks. It was quite fine. It wasn't fancy. I just remember having to go to bed with scarves around my ears to protect me from the earwigs, which we were told as soon as we got there would climb at night into your ears and eat your eardrums away.After Bonegilla we were sent to Melbourne where there were a few hostels. I can remember we were close enough to the bay you could walk to the water. There were factories that the migrants could walk to and get work. My mother went and worked at Johnson and Johnson packing tampons and my stepfather went to the other side, which was Dunlop tires to make tires.You could leave when you were ready, when you had work and stuff. The gates were always open and there was a bus that would take me to the local primary school. After that we kind of moved around Melbourne and then ended up in Sydney.My mother and stepfather's relationship was very volatile and not very healthy. He was 22 and she was 27 and she had a child and he basically became a drug dealer, so we were with people who it wasn't healthy for a child to be around. We were in these share houses and mum was always running from him to get away and he was always following us. I went to 14 schools and we just kept moving. It wasn't very stable.Eventually, what saved us... well, he went to jail, so that was kind of good for us. My mum had a really tough time. She also had mental health issues. She was traumatized also from her childhood during the Second World War. So she had her own trauma from childhood and a very controlling father and then she had a very controlling violent husband, and then she had a very controlling second husband. So she really did have a tough time but once Whitlam got in in 1972, that made our life so much better.I don't think people realize what an effect a government can have on on people's lives. Our lives changed because Whitlam brought in the single mother's pension, so women were no longer judged for being single mothers. They were supported. And at the same time we got our hands on a housing commission flat in Surry hills in Devonshire Street, right next to Central Station. So we had affordable, stable housing. I got into Sydney Girls High and so we kind of landed on our feet there.After high school, I went to Sydney College of the Arts where I got a visual art degree and I got married to my husband Russell and then and then he got a job up here. My first baby was six weeks old when he started his job at the Lismore Base Hospital and so we've been here for 35 years now.I had three children and when my youngest started kindie, I decided to go to Lismore Tafe to learn more skills with my drawing and painting. At Sydney College it was really very conceptual, the learning there and they didn't teach us practical skills. And so the Tafe course was a really good move because the Tafe had excellent teachers.Within two years I felt really confident with my mark making and skills, and I won my first art prize at the end of that year at Coraki for drawing. I just thought: “I'm an artist now.” That was the beginning of my art career and I made the decision to build a studio at our house and be a practicing artist. That's 20 years ago now.Katka Adams drawing Trinity from her exhibition Animalia. IMAGE: Supplied/Katka Adams.My art teacher at the time said I had to enter the JADA (Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award) art prize, which is quite a hard drawing price to get into. That was my goal to get hung there one day and I just kept trying every year and then when I eventually did get hung, that encouraged me to keep going.The exhibition I did before this one was about my own migration story, and while I was doing that I became more interested in other people's migration stories as well. So I put in a proposal with the Lismore Regional Gallery that I would have this show during Refugee Week about refugees and migrants who live in Lismore now, called Coming Home. That was the concept behind the show. Then I had to meet people and interview them and really come out of my own studio to actually hear about other stories, which has been really interesting.Busara was born in Thailand before migrating to Australia and now owns Ghetto Babe Street Eats in Lismore. IMAGE: Supplied/Katka Adams.Some of them I knew already. Renee Bolton in the show is an artist who comes from Holland. He was one of my teachers and is a friend. I looked at Denise Alison's Humans of Lismore page on Facebook and through that I found Busara, who runs Ghetto Babes Street Eats and also Helen who came out as an Indian child bride when she was 14. I also rang Vistara Primary School because part of their philosophy is to be multicultural and I got a little girl whose parents are from the USA. I wanted to have a mixture of age groups in the show from very young to very old and also a variety of countries and different reasons that people came to Lismore, to kind of balance the show.Katka Adams' pastel and pencil on paper, Love 2019, is part of the Coming Home exhibition. IMAGE: Supplied/Katka Adams.I also contacted Sanctuary, who got me in touch with Philip because I wanted to find someone who was a refugee through that system. His mother got a humanitarian visa, and got settled here through Sanctuary.I also met people through word of mouth. It just kind of grew naturally because over the six months that I've been working on the project, there's always been someone I'm actually working on and the next person I kind of already knew who they would be, but I didn't know in January the 10 people that I would have, I just knew one or two at a time. And as I finished those drawings, I'd look around for the next person.Philip is a refugee, and I'm in there and I'm a refugee. The others really came out as migrants. Renee, who's the artist, he applied four times. On his fourth attempt at permanent residency, he got accepted because he's a cultural asset to Australia - and he really is. Busara is from Thailand. Her mother married an Irishman living in Melbourne, but he was really good to her. Jenny, who's from Ecuador, she married an Australian as well. Charlie also came out as a migrant. His father sent him to Brisbane to study because in Malaysia they had the race riots when Charlie was about 11 and the Chinese lost a lot of rights and it was difficult to get into university. Life was pretty unpredictable. So he sent his children overseas to study.All of their stories resonated with me and they all felt familiar. All migrants have that feeling of not belonging for a while. Every migrant who's left their family, country and place of childhood feels displaced and then there comes a point where you suddenly do feel at home and that's what intrigues me. When does that happen? Some people take a really long time, some people never really get there and other people find it quite quickly.I think children fit in much more quickly than someone who's gone through their whole education and young adult life somewhere else. The ones that are having difficulty are the ones who were around 30 or older. But I think everybody resonates with coming somewhere new.It's not just the language or the food. It's the trees and the air and the way the sun shines. It's kind of everything. Like the milk is different and the grass is different and the flowers are different and the trees are different. Every single thing is a little bit different.Of course, the language barrier is really quite a big thing and I think that's why as I child I drew because I couldn't speak English and I couldn't read English and I couldn't understand English, but I could still draw and people could respond to the drawings. It kind of breaks some of those barriers.Sachiko, who's the Japanese lady in the show, she found that if she could do origami, it helped her connect with people and to share her culture. And so she did it at the library here, teaching monthly origami paper classes and the group is still going on.With this exhibition I wanted to draw attention to the fact that refugees are people who live in our community and are a part of our fabric of the town and that they’re the same as everybody else. I wanted to kind of honor them and show them that we value, appreciate and love them. I love them.I don't know what happened. I don't know what's happened in Australia. I don’t think it was the people, because everybody that I ever talks to is positive about refugees and migrants. We call ourselves a multicultural society - a successful multicultural society - and I've never experienced any prejudice and the friends that I have feel warm and accepted, but in the media and on the news and coming from our leaders there’s a different feeling and a different message.I can't quite work out when that happened. When did our government stop welcoming refugees and start treating them like prisoners or something? Manus Island doesn't make sense to me. I can't understand why they're there. I actually can't work out why they can't just bring them here. The government is spending millions of dollars to keep them, and I don't know why. And where is that money going? Because the refugees are not getting that money. I can't get my head around it.I guess what I'm thinking is that this exhibition can help show people that migrants and refugees belong with us. They belong here and we welcome them.Coming Home is on display at the Lismore Regional Gallery until 28 July. The official opening is at 6pm on July 5.

Tucki Tucki farmer and former bus driver John Paisley has been a member of the Rural Fire Service at Wyrallah for more than 50 years and this week he was rewarded for his community service with an OAM. The first fire I can remember, I don't know whether I was still at primary or high school, was a grass fire down on the flat here. Four farms got burned out. I was helping mum milk the cows and dad was down there and they ran out of water. I don't know how the message got back home but I had to get the draft horse which was tied up, the slide and cream cans and water - because in those days it was only just knapsacks, bags and branches.I took them up here to the corner to the [Tucki Tucki] cemetery. Dad met me there on the horse, I rode the horse home and dad took the water down to the fellas on the fire. I can remember next morning riding into the back paddock and seeing how black everything was.I think dad was vice captain of the brigade or deputy captain or something. Same as probably what I have been.The Tucki Brigade used to be always about say 20 blokes with knapsacks. Prior to the Rural Fire Service taking it over, it used just to be community organised - it was Tucki, Wyrallah, Monaltrie, Marom Creek. Just little areas.I can remember one night at the Wyrallah Hall through Gundurimba Shire they were trying to establish a brigade. I know there were about 60 or 70 people there and they didn't want to hand out overalls to 60 or 70 blokes. They wanted to narrow it down to 15 or 18 or something. I can remember that. I was only probably 15, 16, 17 or something. By the time I was involved it was the RFS brigade.Usually it was all private vehicles. The first vehicle we got was a Bedford four-wheel-drive, petrol. I think that was through Lismore City Council at that stage and then the brigade got taken over by the Rural Service Fire and the diesel four-wheel-drives came in.They were trucks with tankers mainly, dual cabs with a tank of water on the back. Then two-way radio came in and everything else has come since to what it is today.Now if you get called out to a house fire or something they can call in Caniaba, Alphadale, Woodburn, all other vehicles from other areas. You just combine the whole lot together. It's just one big family, I guess you could say it was that way now. The individual brigades are smaller but they can come from a wider area.The most significant fire I've been involved with lately was the one 12 months or so ago over at Ellengowan. It was pretty volatile when we got there. I was actually going to another one, taking the truck down to Bungawalbin. I got out to Coraki and they called me up and said: “Hang on. Just stop. There's another one at Ellengowan just started.” So we turned around, went back to it. It was pretty hairy there for a while when you're in amongst trees and that type of thing. But you get over it and just keep going. It burned out a fair few acres that one. It went for nearly a fortnight. Lucky it was in the time of year it was. If it was later or summertime, it would have been worse. We were pretty lucky it was at that stage.When I first started it was only sort of like grass fires that you sorted out for your community. Now it’s more road accidents. We've been down to the highway for truck fires and that type of thing. House fires are very stressful. The first one I ever went to... it sort of cuts you up a bit. After you come home for a while, after the things you saw, you're sort of worried about it, but you just go and do it now and don't think about it.It's hard on the owners, you see them and just hope they're insured. You try not to let it get to you. I've known ones that it has got to. Road accidents are the worst ones I think for trauma but you don't try and dwell on it. The best thing after it, if anyone has got a bit of a problem, is talk about it. Discuss it. Don't bottle it up.John Paisley's medal for 50 years service with the RFS. PHOTO: Will Jackson.My wife Lyn has been very supportive. It frightens you when the pager goes off beside your bed at night. Sort of startles you. Road accidents, when you get on the pager, person trapped or something like that.There was a fatality just 100 yards up the road here. It was a wet afternoon, cold. I rang Lyn up and said the accident investigation and that were there and she brought up some hot coffee and some toasted sandwiches, she got the job of that. We had a van at that time and she stood at the back of it in pouring rain and poured out coffees for the police and accident investigators and the fire fellas.There's usually only about 10 members in the brigade. You might get 15 at times. People shift on. It's been good actually with members and everybody looks out for one another because when you're on the end of that hose, at times you can get heat stroke or whatever. You've got to sort of watch out for that.You can get all over the place with the RFS. I sort of can't get away as much. I've been to a few out of zone fires but a lot of others, that aren't as tied down as me, they go to Brisbane or Sydney or wherever the fires are and they're needed. Get to see a bit of the country and that type of thing.With me getting to my age now, there's been a lot that's been in it that have left now because of their age or ailments or health or whatever. The younger people are coming through now, which is good because I can't keep going much longer. I reckon probably another couple of years anyway.The only thing I can say to anybody is get out there and help your organisations, no matter what what it is. Help one another. It helps everybody and then you get the satisfaction of it, which I suppose comes back to me I suppose with the OAM, getting that. The gong is pleasing but I didn't expect it.All I can say is just thank you. It is just a bit overwhelming to get it. I never expected it. Never dreamed of it. It is a good feeling. I'm just one of those ones who don't expect it. Just do it for the love of it and help people out. Dad always had the saying, help thy neighbour. Probably it's a bit different today to what it was back then but it’s still true.

Naomi Moran is the general manager of the Lismore-based Koori Mail, the country's only newspaper managed and owned by Indigenous Australians. Her particular passion is for providing employment pathways for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls and women stemming from her own experiences as a youngster frustrated in the education system and eventual success.I'm originally from the area. My family lived at Cabbage Tree Island so I have a strong connection to the Ballina area. We also have family connections to Kempsey, which is Dunghutti country. So I’m very proud to be both done Dunghutti and Bundjalung.I've also always had a strong connection to the Lismore area. I went to Goonellabah Public School and then did half a year at Kadina High School before we moved back to Ballina. My mum always worked in the Lismore area in the community health space, so we were always back and forth between Ballina and Lismore, depending on her work commitments.I grew up being supported by family members that had really great work ethics like Uncle Digby Moran, that's my mum's brother, and my mum had an amazing work ethic too. She was a single mum but always managed to work and provide for us.I was at school until grade 10. I hadn't even completed my year 10 certificate when I left.I really struggled in the school system, more socially and finding my place in the school environment as a young Aboriginal person. I found that I would thrive more when I was in a class filled with my cousins and my family members, but when I did well academically I was put in different classes where I kind of felt isolated. I felt like "I'm here, but why can' the rest of my mob come with me?"Back in those days there wasn't the support I see now within the school systems to help Indigenous students create pathways and to stay engaged in school.I really loved learning, just not particularly in that environment. I'd go home every day and say to mom that I wanted to quit school. She said, “Well, you've got two choices. You either stay in school or you get a job.” So I decided that I was going to get a job.Not long after that, the general manager of the Koori Mail at the time put a call out to schools in the area for any young Aboriginal girls looking to do a trainingship. My school was contacted and I put my hand up straight away because I wanted to get out of school so badly. They asked me to come do a work trial, I think it was for a day or two, and then they offered me a position. I had just turned 14.On April 20, 1998, I quit school, signed out of grade 10, and signed up for my first day of the working world.At that time the Koori Mail was located over in Magellan Street, across from the Mecca Cafe. I remember going there and after a day thinking, what have I done? We didn't have computer classes in those days - that makes it sound pretty ancient, but we didn't - and when they set me in front of a computer at the Koori Mail I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know how to turn it on.My job was to do all the things that nobody wanted to do: change the toilet rolls, make the cups of tea, do the photocopying, the filing, all that type of stuff.It was supposed to be a 12-month traineeship and I ended up staying at the Koori Mail for 10 years, until 2008.As much as I wanted to stay with the paper, at the end of my first stint there I was 25 and I'd never left my community, never left my family. That was the next challenge that I had to face. I thought if an opportunity presents itself, I'll take it.I was on a little long service leave holiday for about two or three weeks and I got a phone call from NITV, the National Indigenous Television Station saying, “we'd like you to come work for us”. So I took that opportunity, packed up my car and drove down to Sydney and started working at NITV.I was mainly working in the communications department focusing on supporting their publicists with press releases, marketing and promotions and working on various productions when I could. In those days they were kind of just getting on their feet I was able to just pretty much chip in doing a lot of different things, and I really enjoyed that.I'd already decided that I wanted to stay in Indigenous media and so I was learning anything that I could to support that pathway. Being able to travel to different communities as well throughout those times has contributed to my understanding of not just myself as an Aboriginal person but also how all our communities are a very different, even though we all have the same issues and struggles.I was at NITV for two years and then I got a phone call from my mum. My mum's sister had passed away. She didn't have any children of her own and she was really close to all of us kids. That kind of really shattered me and the realization that I'd been away from home a bit too long kind of hit me.So again, I packed up and came back up this way. I was offered a position to work with the National Indigenous Radio Service, in Brisbane. I was really excited and happy to take that on, again following my chosen pathway in Indigenous media but through another platform.Throughout all this time since I had left school, there had been opportunities for me to kind of give back to either schools or to individual young people based on my experiences with struggling in school. I'd often get phone calls to go and spend time with students, particularly at Ballina High School or the high schools here, to participate in mentoring programs and kind of share my experiences.I think it was after about maybe a year at the radio service when I was presented with an opportunity to do that full time as an Indigenous program officer within the Gold Coast Titans Beyond Tomorrow program.The program was basically an arm of the football club specifically to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and communities that was very much supported by the legacy of Preston Campbell at the club. We did some really great work with students not just in the Gold Coast and Brisbane areas but also Mornington Island and Doomadgee. We'd have students come down for camps and we focused on how can we engage them in employment and training opportunities.Then in 2015, I just felt like I needed to come home - I don't know why to this day - and the YWCA gave me the opportunity to develop a program supporting young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls and women, again with creating employment and training pathways, but also focusing on the obstacles and challenges for our young girls and women to achieve their employment and training goals.They'd asked me to take a look at a program structure that they had already had that I needed to kind of work to, but at the same time, I had the freedom to change that according to how I felt it should be delivered in the most culturally appropriate and effective way in the area. I then spoke to my uncle Charles about giving it a name and he helped me name the programNgalingah's Mijung Dubais, which means our happy women.So I put to them a program that's specific to working with young Aboriginal girls and women in this area and they said yes and offered funding for 12 months.The program is still going today which is really exciting and something that I'm really proud of and I’m really grateful to the YWCA for realizing the program was important and very much needed.Then in 2016 I got a phone call from the general manager or the Koori Mail, Steve Gordon, who had been general manager for over 20 years - he was my first boss - and he said he was ready to move on.I guess the board had faith that I knew the business back to front and that I was capable of not just taking on the role, but also learning along the way. I wasn't all that confident in taking on such a big role at a youngish age but I accepted the position and started back here in the role of general manager in April, 2016, exactly 18 years to the month since I’d first started here in 1998. So yeah guess that’s going full circle, whatever you call it.Once I kind of found my feet here, I began to look at ways that I could not just fulfil my role in terms of business operations but what could I bring to the Koori Mail that's never been considered before in terms of opportunities for the Koori Mail to expand as an Aboriginal business and support employment and training opportunities or generate other income streams.So something I've been working on over the past three years is making sure that the Koori Mail has the opportunity to reach its full potential as an Indigenous business. Even though we're focused on still delivering the beautiful product that is the newspaper, and being a well respected and well run Indigenous media service we’re also considering how can we support the community with employment and training opportunities as an organization.For example, this year's the first year that we've got a school based traineeship program off the ground. It's never happened before. I feel that it's our responsibility to support our young people with employment opportunities - obviously that's my passion and experience - and give back to the community what was given to me, 21 years ago.So we will commence that in the next few weeks where we'll take on to high school students and they will come out of it with a Certificate III in Business Administration after a one or two year period. I'm really excited that we get to work with these young people and kick off this new program. I feel that we're the right people here in this organization to support them through that.So yeah, it's been quite a ride. If I can say anything, it’s that I that my purpose isn't just to move the Koori Mail forward in my role as general manager. I still very much feel that my purpose is to contribute to community in any way that I can, as long as I can.Whether it is still continuing to work with our youth or to work with non-Indigenous people or non-Indigenous organizations about how to best work with our people to provide that support. I feel there's there's still and always will be a level of cultural responsibility that I have as an individual to the communities that that I'm surrounded by.I think that's always been my mentality. The more that I achieve and succeed, it means the more potential there is for my community and other individuals to achieve and succeed. That's what I'm really trying to focus on. It's never been just about me. It's about everybody else too.

Michelle Mitchell is the principal at LJ Hooker Lismore and a founding committee member of cancer charity Jodie's Inspiration. Michelle spoke to the Lismore App about how a chance meeting with a billionaire property developer changed her life, her own battle with cancer and the big motivator that helped her get through it. I was born and bred here. I always held jobs in and around town but more in a retail environment until my early 30s when I left Lismore with two small children after a marriage separation and went to the Gold Coast. One of the first people I met there was Harry Triguboff. Soon after I arrived, one of my girlfriends and her husband moved up there and gave me some work doing the books and occasionally cleaning the units at a strata building they had bought. One day this older guy shuffled in in these beachy clothes and was like: "I'm here, I've got to sort some cleaning.” And I'm like: "Oh yeah, no worries. Let me just unlock the door for you." I was thinking, he was a bit elderly to be a cleaner but oh well. So I got the mop and bucket and the broom, and he went: “No, no, I need someone to clean my unit.” So I went: “Oh, so sorry. I can do that for you. I've got a couple of hours this afternoon.” It turned out it wasn’t just an apartment that needed cleaning, it was the penthouse which included the top two floors. It took me and my friend all night. Harry’s wife arrived the next day and wanted to meet me. He had gone away but had told her: “I want this girl to work for me.”Harry made a huge, huge impact on my life. I was the first person that ever told him that if I was going to work for him I couldn’t start until I'd dropped my children at school and I had to be able to pick them up in the afternoon. He was a bit like: “Well, no one's ever said that to me before. Do you know who I am?” But that’s what I had to do. I didn’t have any family support there but we became part of his Gold Coast family. Such wonderful people. I'm still in contact with him today. I was lucky enough to work at his penthouse at times and my kids would swim in his pool, which was like a 25 meter pool on the 40th floor. I worked in some of his developments at Sundale. I did some sales and from there I took a job at The Glades Golf, which is a big international company. I worked there and for Harry, which was a bit of a juggle. My biggest client at the time was LJ Hooker and then they made an offer for me to come work for them. So I did about eight years in real estate on the Gold Coast with LJ Hooker. One of the reasons I moved away in the first place was I didn't want to get divorced in Lismore and then just remarry someone I went to school with and get all caught up in that cycle.What ended up happening is I met my now husband, Robert Menin, at Tweed Heads - and of course he's from Lismore. Robert’s brother Tony, who has sadly passed away, actually drove the wedding car for my first wedding. Small world. We had a long distance relationship for 12 months and then me and the two kids moved home and I started working in sales here at LJ Hooker Lismore. That was seven years ago.The kids didn’t like moving back. My daughter, Hannah, was only here for about 12 months before she moved to Melbourne. My son Alex transferred to Trinity and of course, I was the worst mother in the world because he was 15 and it was a really hard age and he only knew the Gold Coast. It turned out to be the best thing for him. He formed wonderful friendships. Trinity were amazing and he got 99.4 in his HSC and is now doing medicine in Melbourne.Robert, Michelle, Alex and Hannah. PHOTO: Supplied.It was five years ago while I was supporting one of my close friends, Jodie McRae, through breast cancer when I was diagnosed with breast cancer as well. It was just by chance that we caught it. I had a friend here that needed to go to have a breast screening and needed a lift. While I was waiting for my friend, the receptionist said there had been a cancellation. Did I want to have one while I was already there? A week later I was going in for an operation with stage four aggressive breast cancer.When I came out of the surgery, they told me that my lymph nodes were completely black and that meant the cancer was about five days off spreading which would have given me three months to live. So it was a real blessing. It was like someone was looking after meIt happened so quick, I didn't get time to think. Alex was doing his HSC and Hannah was going overseas on a holiday. Robert and I had just merged two families together and I had a job and I needed to pay school fees and we had mortgages. So I was just like: "Well, I'm just going to work. I'm just going to have this quick operation and I'm just going to work." I came and told Reyna and Paul, who owned the company at the time, that I was going to have the surgery Thursday and I'd do my open houses Saturday. They were like: “No, why don't you at least take Saturday off?” Then I just started this journey of chemotherapy and radiation. Along the way I had an allergic reaction to my second chemo and had a cardiac arrest. Beautiful. Just, like, bring it all on, knock me out.It took nine months. I worked full time the whole time. I would come to work after my chemo on Thursday and then I'd take Monday and Tuesday off because they would usually be the bad days. When I had my radiation, I had it for six weeks every morning at 8am and then straight to work. Robert got his real estate license so he could do all my open homes on a Saturday so I could still work and do all the hard stuff during the week.My actual thing was, I'm not going to die because I've just spent my whole life working really hard for my children and I'm not going to not see them grow up and follow their dreams. I'm not going to die. I am not going to miss out watching these guys fulfill their dreams. I've been there for the hard yards.Then my doctor just went: “Yay, everything's great. You're cured. Just get back to normal life.” And I fell in a heap. It felt like I had a nervous breakdown. I slept for a month. Michelle, on her first public outing after getting rid of her wig, with Alex and Robert. PHOTO: Supplied.Then I went back really to supporting Jodie. She had been supporting me but as I got the all clear, she got her second lot of diagnoses.When we lost her I found it really hard. I was one of the people caring for her in her last days and I really struggled with survivor guilt. It does exist. I would look at her and go, how come it's her and not me? Michelle and Jodie. PHOTO: Supplied.Being a founding committee member of Jodie's Inspiration has meant a lot to me. We work really hard and we love that charity and I think we've done some amazing things. It's a huge part of my life for a number of reasons.Michelle at the Breast Cancer Network Australia 20th anniversary in Melbourne in 2018. PHOTO: Supplied.Being part of Jodie’s Inspiration has helped me a lot, knowing I could give back. As far as Lismore goes, what we have on offer here in the hospital system is second to none. I didn't have to leave town for anything. To be part of a charity raising money so people could have the same experience I did has been amazing.Robert’s family used to own the Menins supermarket and when they sold the business, he moved on to work for Bidvest and Streets Ice Cream and was a sales manager, which he loved, but he really loved real estate. So when the opportunity arose to buy LJ Hooker about three years ago, he was like: “Yeah, let's do it.” So we went, you know what? Why not? I love what I do. Clint McCarthy here is our partner and Robert left his job and joined us. We got married the same month as we bought the business.Through my sickness Robert, my kids and a small circle of family and friends supported me. I wouldn’t be here without him.So now we have a great team here. We like to have our hand in anything we can that helps the community. We are a team of 12 sales people, property management and admin and I love it. I love what I do. I love being able to do it in Lismore.Alex, Michelle Robert and Hannah. PHOTO: Supplied.My children are now both in Melbourne. Hannah's 26 and she's living the dream and working in her industry of website and design and just loving life and Alexander is 22 and in his fifth year of medicine currently working in the hospital full time. He's six foot five, with long blonde, bleached hair and a few piercings. Loving it, killing it. They're both following their dreams and that's all I could have wanted for my children and to be here to watch that happen makes me totally blessed.I turned 50 last year and went, you know what? I came home from the Gold Coast with so much more experience and belief in myself and brought back these two amazing humans. I really feel proud that they've been allowed to live their life and be who they really are. And that doesn't happen for a lot of kids. It's been a journey and a ride and I've got a lot to be grateful for.

Former Marist Brothers Lismore player Michael Gahan, who is the Sunday Profile, played for the Under 13 and Under 17 Australian Baseball teams before he left for the US to play college baseball. Now 24 and a regular in the national side, he has returned to Australia to play as a pitcher for the Adelaide Bite in the Australian Baseball League. He is still living between Australia and America.How long did you live in Lismore for?I was born and raised in Lismore and lived with my mum Emma, dad Anthony and brother Jordan until I was 18 years old. I then moved to the US to play college baseball.What are your memories of growing up in Lismore?I have a lot of memories growing up in Lismore. I remember a lot about playing sports really because I was playing baseball in the winter and in the summer, I would play cricket. Eventually, I moved away from cricket to focus solely on baseball. I went to high school at Woodlawn (St John's College) and enjoyed playing on the school basketball team as well.When did you first hit or throw a ball? How did it come about that you became a pitcher? I bet you made a mess on your parents’ walls!!From what I was told I began playing tee ball when I was four years old. I was fortunate enough that I wasn’t just a pitcher growing up and was able to play two-way player in college (Pitcher/Infielder). Recently, my focus has moved to just being a pitcher in the Australian Baseball League as that will give me the best chance to play at a higher level.Did you mainly play baseball straight off in Lismore, or did you start on another sport?It was baseball from the beginning and I played a few other sports occasionally. I grew up playing baseball in Lismore since I can remember.Was it difficult to be playing baseball when so much of the focus in summer in Australia is on cricket? Did you have an idol?When I was younger, I would play cricket in the summer until around 16 or 17 and then I began to play baseball in Brisbane during the summer, so I was playing almost close to all year round. I have a couple of idols. They are not just pitchers. I’d say my favourite player in Nolan Arenado, who is the third basemen for the Colorado Rockies. My favour pitcher would have to be Pedro Martinez, who played in the big leagues from 1992-2009. Being a Boston Redsox fan, he was one of the best in Boston during his time there.What attracted you to baseball and what was the baseball scene like in Lismore, was it low-key or fairly intense? Who was your mentor/mentors?I think that I was just put into baseball because of my family. All the guys in the family played and I just took it on as well. Growing we had a really competitive league in Lismore and there was a high calibre of players to learn from. I would say that the competition was extremely competitive. I think I made my A grade debut when I was 15 or 16 so playing above my age group against grown men it was tough at times, but it definitely made me a better player. I think my mentors growing up would be my dad, uncles and grandfather although Dave, Mick, and Terry Youngberry, as well as Matt Buckley played a major part in my development as a player. After being in the US for 5 years I gained a lot more mentors which has made me better as well. My college coaches Jeff Brabant and Aaron Sutton are still mentors to this day as well as all the assistant coaches during my time in college.Which club did you play for in Lismore?I grew up playing for Marist Brothers Baseball Club at Albert Park.I know you were selected for the U19, U17, and U13 Australian national teams. At what stage did you decide you wanted to head overseas and take things a step further?Being able to play for Australia is really special, it is my favourite uniform to wear. There is just something different about putting on green and gold and playing against the best players from other countries. I recently got back from Colombia in South America with the U23 Australian Team and it was an awesome experience and made me really want to keep playing. Making the U13, U17 and U19 teams were great experiences too and gave me the ability to see different places throughout the world.What year did you first head overseas to play? It must have been a wrench to leave your family behind. Did you promise your parents you would return or not?I played overseas in 2007, although I didn’t pack up and completely leave home until 2013. It definitely was tough leaving my family behind but they were super supportive of what I wanted to do and to be honest they were probably sick of me being at home. We never really talked about whether I would come back or not but I would come home for Christmas holidays every year during college so I would see them once a year.Australian international baseballer Michael Gahan has returned to Australia to play for the Adelaide Bite in the Australian Baseball League. Picture: SuppliedHave you checked out the Home Improvements button? Click hereI read you finished playing for Montana State University Billings Yellowjackets with a career- best performance last year. You left on a high. Why?Montana State was awesome but unfortunately I had to leave because I was graduating with a degree in Business Marketing. Technically everyone is only allowed to play four years of college athletics pending a serious injury, in which you can have a medical redshirt, to keep an extra year of eligibility. I pitched in a sudden death game which we had to win in order to stay alive in the conference championships. It was pretty cool that I threw a complete game and got us to the next game of the conference tournament. I really enjoyed my time as a Yellowjacket and enjoyed my time going to university there.Tell us in detail about the American experience. I think you started with Miles CC. Where’s that?I began at a junior college in Miles City, Montana, which was called Miles Community College. After two years there I had committed to a university in Denver, Colorado, but decided to transfer to Montana State University Billings which is in Billings, Montana. I spent two years at MCC and transferred to Montana State for my last two years of college.Was it much of a step up in terms of the level of competition compared to Australia?It was different. Everyone on the team was competing for a starting position. There was definitely a learning curve over the first couple of months. We go from practicing in Australia once or twice a week and playing on a Saturday. Over there we were practicing every day and playing four games a week, so the workload was a lot higher. As I moved up through the different colleges the competition got better and better.You’ve got guys over there pitching at almost 100 miles an hour, giving you a reaction time as a batter of less than a third of a second. Tell us the art of being a pitcher? Is it all in the arm or is the posture something to do with it to?It’s definitely surreal seeing those guys that throw that hard in real life. It sounds different out of the hand and it becomes harder to see and react. I had the chance to hit against a couple of guys during my time in the US that were throwing 96 mph and it is extremely hard. They definitely had the upper hand in those situations. On the other end throwing hard is being more relevant in baseball today. To some people’s belief throwing hard is not just about the arm, it’s about the whole body and getting it to work in a way that I like to call the ‘Rubber Band effect’ or ‘Coiling’. Throwing a baseball hard really comes down to getting each body part to move at a maximum velocity, starting from your legs through your hips and torso and eventually through the shoulders, then elbow, and finally released from the fingers. Today’s game of baseball is being taken over by technology and now us athletes are using it to our advantage to make us better.How’s the gamesmanship, is there intimidation going on? Were you as the Aussie, always the outsider?The gamesmanship was awesome, not really an intimidation as such. Being an Aussie definitely helped me become friends with a lot of people and we talk about our teams being a family and that’s what we were. We all supported each other through the ups and the downs of the game. I have made so many friendships just from playing baseball it's actually incredible.Former Marist Brothers baseball player Michael Gahan throws a pitch for Australia. Photo: AnlocolClick on the link to see what's happening in Trades & ServicesDid you have to work to support yourself in the US or was the pay sufficient?Because I went into the US on a student visa it didn’t really allow me to work unless it was on the university campus. My last year at Montana State I got a paid internship on campus so that was pretty cool. I got to make a little bit of money and got some marketing experience as well.I think you are now playing for the Adelaide Bite. How did that come about?That came about from playing on the Australian Team in Colombia. Our pitching coach Luke Prokopec for the national team was a part of the coaching staff for the Adelaide Bite and was impressed by my outings during the championships and it all came together from there. They gave me the opportunity to break out into the league as a starting pitcher, so I took the opportunity and haven’t looked back. I am in off-season now, so I am travelling to the US as a bit of a holiday for a month, I am in Denver, Colorado right now, and then I am coaching/working out in Canada. After that I will go back to the US for a month and go to Driveline Baseball which is basically a high tech place that people go to workout and use the high tech equipment they, such as motion sensors and biomechanical equipment to see what baseball players can do to gain more velocity and gain better ways to improve performance.How does it feel when you come back to Lismore, how do you get treated and what about the improvements to the Albert Park baseball centre? Do you train there at all?I enjoy coming home after being away for so long. It’s kind of relaxing in a way to just hang out at home and catch up with friends and maybe head to the beach. Everyone still treats me the same and there are a lot of good people still involved in Far North Coast Baseball. The improvements to the facilities are awesome. I enjoy coming home and seeing all the new upgrades that have happened at Albert Park. The facility is moving in a great direction and I look forward to seeing the finished product. I have trained there after a few of the upgrades but have not seen the upgrades to Baxter Field yet.What do you feel you’ve gained from having baseball as one of the major focuses in your life? You have been living your dream in essence.It has been an awesome journey and hopefully there is a lot more to come. I think during my time in college really taught me a lot about myself and how to handle different situations. I think one of the biggest attributes I gained was taking accountability for my performances and if it was bad figuring out a way to get better. I like to think of it as just trying to get better by one percent every day and then at the end of the month or year you can ask yourself: 'Did I get one per cent better every day and if you did then you know that you have improved from where you once were.I know it does not come easy but any advice to any youngster playing the sport?I think the biggest advice for youngsters playing sport is to have fun and compete. We all see people at sporting events yelling at kids what to do and to be better. It’s unbelievable seeing parents yelling at kids while they are playing sport. Let them have fun and from there, they can decide if they want to pursue their sport as a career. Too often I see parents trying to raise their kids to be the next Lebron James or Roger Federer when it should really just be about enjoying the sport.Check out the Weather/Travel situation in Lismore