Our Board

Phil has lived in Neerim for 29 years on small farm where he and his wife Margaret run a couple of hundred sheep for lamb production.

Over the years Phil and Margaret have fenced the stock from Shady Creek, which runs through the farm and planted native trees in some of the steeper sections and planted shelter belts in paddocks that didn’t have shelter. Pasture improvement and increased biodiversity is an ongoing goal for their farm.

Phil has been a member of the Neerim and District Landcare Group for many years and after a couple of years on the committee , he is now the current secretary of the group. Phil joined the LCLN Board in September 2017 and we look forward to his contribution in coming years.

Ian’s background includes 43 years in electrical engineering and management in the power industry. Ian consulted to AusNet and others for optic fibre cabling on towerlines and stations, and was also a peer auditor for Environmental Management Systems and an energy auditor.

Ian served a term on the WGCMA board and several policy committees and was the Springsure Hill Landcare Group chair for many years. He is also a volunteer broadcaster on station 3BBR FM, reading newspapers for the print handicapped, and is a member of its board.

When Ian and his wife Marion made a tree-change to farming, they joined community self-help and reference groups to learn farming, and reached ISO 14001 accreditation to supply Enviromeat brand. Ian and his wife Marion have bred Angus cattle and won several Landcare awards for their farming practices: planted over 5,000 trees and shrubs in new shelter belts and creek areas. When time permits, they care for their primary school grand daughter, and tow their camper around Australia in the grey nomad season.

Darryl’s skills he attributes to the board, stem from his knowledge and experience as a geology technician in the civil field. He values giving back to rural landowners and finds Landcare is a great place to put this energy.

He is the son of a struggling dairy farmer;

• Starting as a trainee with the state road authority years ago.

• Seconded to working hard with raw materials specifications for the Loy Yang power station construction.

He moved over to an advisory role on pavement issues with CRB/VicRoads and worked the best job in the world until he retired in 2000. Under budget restraints, this work with landholders, slip mitigation and coastal repair, severe climatic events and pavement surfacing safety issues gave him a great insite to community needs.

He love’s holding the pasture ‘dirt’ between his fingers and Landcare membership provides this ongoing. He is always amazed at the dedication of landholders and CMA to consider and try alternatives under budget restraints.

“Landcare is so diversified in looking after native; animals & birds, stock and waterways, weeds and pastures, forests and erosion problems – what a great group to be part of!” - Darryl says.

Married with 5 scattered children, living the dream as they say, on 10 Acres just 5Km from Traralgon. He volunteers his time between Rotary, Taxis, community organisations and soil science which take up a lot of his time.

Growing up on a large flood irrigation dairy farm in northern Victoria, Laura became an agricultural consultant in Gippsland after graduating from university. Her main focuses in the 18 years in the industry were primarily land management based; designing sustainable and profitable small agricultural businesses on small landholdings in peri-urban areas, as well as undertaking Executive officer roles in the Victorian potato industry, and undertaking disturbance impact assessments and management strategies for various major State Government, VicRoads and private pipeline and easement works across Victoria.

She also regularly took part in soil and plant pest and disease sampling and analysis, designed and helped farmers implement nutrient and effluent retention on dairy farms, and held positions on State and Federal horticultural boards as well as undertaking other extremely varied projects within the horticultural and dairy industry.

Laura lives on a small farm in Willow Grove with her young family and is actively involved in the local school and equestrian community in the area as well as being a leader for 1st Trafalgar Scout Group. After a year in the Executive Manager role, Laura now looks forward to working alongside the Board to promote, support and expand the network to engage with people across all generations and cultures to ensure a strong, sustainable future for the network.

David is a proud resident of Boolarra, a tranquil village nestled in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, famous for its summer folk festival. He puts his love of the natural environment and Landcare down to the subtle influence of his parents. Amongst many things, he is fascinated by Victoria’s cool and warm temperate rainforests.

David is a volunteer member of several community groups including: the local CFA brigade, the Koala Clancy Foundation, of which he is Treasurer. In 2021 David joined the Gippsland Agroforestry Network. David also worked on a Thorpedale potato and sheep farm during Covid sparked his interest in the intersection of primary production, conservation, forestry and First Nations peoples’ care for Country. David notes that these experiences have been life changing, and ones that set him on the path towards land management and conservation.

David’s strengths are planning, research and community engagement. His wish, one day, is to correctly identify eucalypts on demand.

John grew up mainly at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges in the 1940s through to the early 1960s. His grandparents had a 10 acre (4 hectare) farm which is now under industrial estates. There was a lot of forest nearby and we used to cut firewood there.

He joined the Scouting movement while he was living in Burwood for a time and went through the movement's levels ultimately achieving the Queen's Scout award. This meant he spent a lot of time hiking and camping in forest areas and he learned to love our forests as a result.

With this background, he applied for, and gained, a place at the Victorian School of Forestry (VSF) in Creswick which he attended in the years 1963 - 1965.

Subsequent postings with the Forests Commission included Assessment Branch, Biological Research (= Sirex Wasp control), and in the field, Forrest, in the Otway Ranges, then Stawell focusing on the Grampians and surrounds, and the Neerim District, which included five years in a management position in the Mount Baw Baw Alpine Resort.

Following an enforced "retirement", he did contract work which included aerial photo interpretation, timber assessment, coupe boundary marking and twelve years as a Fire Tower Operator. A large part of his duties while working with the Department, in its various evolutions was to engage with landholders to promote Trees on Farms and farm plantation schemes. As a result, he saw the tremendous damage that had been done to the land, through tree clearing, in the forms of salinity, erosion of various types and weed growth that reduced the amount of land available for crops, etc. John could see how unproductive all this made the land. During this time, he worked with two people who were high up in the Landcare movement and who were inspirational. Dr Rod Bird's work on the effects of windbreaks was also enlightening.

John has also been a member of various volunteer organisations that have, as part of their charter, getting trees the ground. When discussing plantings with people, he likes to emphasise that they should emulate the local native forest, in both species selection and structure. This gives the new plantings the best chance of survival and creates the optimal native animal habitat and wildlife corridor. Landcare is a most attractive organisation and probably the best vehicle to achieve what he believes to be a worthwhile end in very uncertain times. John joined the LCLN Board in 2022.

Following a successful career in banking Alison opted to return to her first love, landscape garden design. A tree change took the family to acreage on the Mornington Peninsula where Alison tended their small herd of stud angora goats during the day. Eventually the angoras took over and Alison turned the floristry school into a farm shop selling a range of natural fibre products and the beginning of a small mail order knitting yarn and knitwear business.

Keith and Alison now live ‘ off grid’ on 28, wildlife friendly, hectares at Boolarra South where they run a successful online business ‘Knitting yarns by mail’ and a niche business supplying mohair for doll makers, santa beards and theatrical wigs. Alison’s interests include organic gardening, permaculture, agroforestry, landscape design, self sufficiency, sustainable farming practices and protection of native wildlife and habitat.

Alison has been on the LCLN board for several years serving on the projects sub committee and is still a committed member of the Boolarra South Landcare Group.

A career forester with government and private industry background and Gippsland based since 1983, Peter formed a consultancy in 1995. Peter soon became involved with private tree-growers in Gippsland and the Gippsland Agroforestry Network (GAN). A short foray with trees and merinos at Woodside led to the purchase of land in the Morwell River Valley in 2007. Peter and his family have found a home with the tree growing fraternity and in 2015 merged GAN in with Landcare as a special interest group.

Peter is passionate about getting out the message that trees can have values other than biodiversity and that agroforestry does improve habitat values on farms. Reaching into the school system with the STEM attributes of producing renewable products from the land will only improve our custody of the land. The Devonshire property at Budgeree is a fitting example of what can be achieved with a little effort and foresight and is used regularly to teach others. Peter’s family home was designed to be energy efficient, export power to the grid all year round and they also grow all their our own firewood with sufficient other wood to be carbon positive.

No one is quite sure of the exact time Peter has volunteered to the LCLN Board, but it’s somewhere around 20+ years. LCLN thank Peter very much for his contribution to Landcare over this time.