Green Adelaide Podcast
Your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia.
Do you want or have a career in South Australia’s environmental sector? Then this podcast is for you!
We are your enviro-exclusive on the people, projects and news of metropolitan SA.
The Green Adelaide Podcast is hosted by our Communication Manager, Melissa Martin.
On each episode she'll interview a local enviro-expert. From leaders and ecologists to planners and marketers to understand their career journey in and around the sector, as well as breakdown top environmental matters.
We’re not your regular environmental podcast, we’re your cool cultural podcast. How we live with our environment in Adelaide is a culture that we must talk about.
Subscribe via your favourite platform so you'll get new episode alerts. We’ll publish new episodes at the end of each month.
Green Adelaide Podcast
Ep 19: 4 enviro career highlights from 2024 | Water engineer + Water-sensitive urban design + Cultural Projects + Landscape architecture + Conservation advocacy + Soil ecology
4 enviro career highlights from 2024
For our final 2024 episode, in light of ATAR results coming out this week, we are showcasing the 4 best enviro career insights that appeared on the pod during 2024.
You’ll hear from a water engineer, place maker, landscape architect, festival organisers and an ecologist.
Our guests talk the different roads taken to purse their career in SA’s environment sector. We hope this ep helps graduates navigate the next chapter of their story.
Congratulations to the class of 2024! Catch us for a new pod ep in 2025.
The Green Adelaide Podcast is your enviro-exclusive on the people, projects and news of metropolitan SA.
The pod hosted by our Communication Manager, Melissa Martin.
On each monthly episode she'll interview a local enviro-expert. From leaders and ecologists, to planners and marketers, to understand their career journey in and around the sector, as well as breakdown top environmental matters.
We’re not your regular environmental podcast, we’re your cool cultural podcast.
How we live with our environment in Adelaide is a culture that we must talk about!
The Green Adelaide Podcast: Your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia.
Subscribe to the Green Adelaide Podcast for new episode alerts!
Welcome to the last Green Adelaide podcast episode for 2024. I'm your host, melissa Martin, and for this episode we're going to do something a little bit different and jump into some highlights from 2024. And we'll be jumping into the career journey highlights from 2024 from the talent that has appeared on the show. So we've had people appear on the show from different segments of the environment sector. So from water engineers to policy, to events, to landscape architects, to Aboriginal engagement, to ecology, and I want to just showcase some of the best bits throughout the year, particularly in light of many students across South Australia getting their SACE results this week and then maybe at a point in their life where they're really thinking about which maybe path they should go down Should they start uni, should they start TAFE, should they start study at all, should they take a gap year or should they jump into the workforce and get some experience. So I hope these four highlights throughout the year from all diverse sections of the environment sector helps maybe bring some clarity to the next steps for our future leaders in the environment sector and maybe what they want to do.
Speaker 1:First up, we have our interview with Dr Nadine Kelly and how she got into being a water engineer. Dr Nadine at the time was working for the Department for Environment and Water in South Australia. She's actually moved roles since then and she really just dives in a lot about her career and how she got into water engineering, which wasn't just a spark of an idea that she started straight away. She actually had a bit of a weaving journey to get there. Nadine has great knowledge of the River Torrens which comes up a lot in our interview and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Probably took a different turn to a lot of other environmental people, I guess, in the idea of engineering to start with. Actually Engineering to me At uni, At uni, yeah, so engineering to me was provided a job at the end of it, but really got into the nitty gritty and I thought if I could understand how engineers work, I could like fix them and fix everything. So that's how I started. But then I branched out into ecology as well and that really provided a nice basis to be, yeah, an ecologist as well as an engineer and try and see how everything interacts.
Speaker 1:So you did engineering at uni and then went on to do postgraduate in ecology.
Speaker 2:Again both. Actually, I decided that life wasn't straightforward enough and that I'd try and do both. So, yes, well, in engineering you do an honours degree anyway. So I did an honours degree in engineering. But then I decided to do a PhD and I'd worked with some great lecturers at the University of Adelaide and there was one in the ecology field, so Dr Keith Walker, who's well known as, I guess, mr Murray His passion and interest in the River Murray has always shone through and some great lecturers in the engineering department, particularly Professor Martin Lambert, who worked really well with Dr Walker.
Speaker 2:So we decided to come up with a PhD that incorporated both engineering and ecology. Essentially it was looking at hydraulic diversity in rivers, fish ecology and spatial diversity as well. So the interesting part was, I guess, both going to fish ecology, so trying to be a fisho, but then having good access to the engineering lab which is at the University of Adelaide. And I built a fake river and I measured the hydraulics and then I put real fish in it and I watched real fish. So I did try and bring the two components together.
Speaker 1:So from doing your PhD? Where did you go from there?
Speaker 2:So I've worked for a couple of consultancies as an environmental engineer, a graduate engineer, where you get thrown all the fun stuff like sorting out soil in soil logs because that's what you do as a graduate engineer designing stormwater systems as well, and I guess that's where I did love engineering. I remember I went for a walk one day at lunch in one of my first jobs as a graduate engineer and I walked over traffic, walked over a traffic you know traffic lights and there was a big hole in the ground. I was like, oh, what are they doing? I'm like, oh, I ordered them to dig that hole and it was just this sudden connection that oh, I've, you know what I can do does make a difference, because I was depth things and pipes to design a stormwater system. But yeah, it's seeing those few things that you can see can actually make a difference.
Speaker 1:So I know what an engineer is, but I think of them as like designing things to build. Yes, what does the water engineer do?
Speaker 2:So a water engineer can also design things to build, obviously so stormwater systems and particularly my other passion of water sensitive urban design is very much based on design, but with engineering as well, in that you can look at hydrology as the other field I often think about, so how water flows down rivers, how you can model even rainfall. So where you get that basis of an understanding of different patterns of water movement and modelling, you can sort of take it out to everywhere actually.
Speaker 1:And so you've got quite a history working with the River Torrens for Green Adelaide in the Farce and also for different agencies. Can you talk a little bit about your career with the River Torrens?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like the River Torrens or Karrawirra Parry is. I was going to say it's a hidden gem. It's not so hidden but in some ways it's valued highly and undervalued at the same time. And I guess when we think about Grand Rivers, you almost automatically will say, in Australia, go to the River Murray, or you think about other big towns with really big rivers, or even Melbourne with the Yarra. But you then take a look back and go well, we always live in cities and all cities are based around rivers and inherently we as people have this connection to this river. And the whole of Adelaide is here because of Karawirapari, because of the River Torrens. That's why it was settled that spot. So once you start to sort of think about where it sits in the context of a city and why you're here, it's quite an interesting story I think, as are probably most rivers in any city actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what was your role in working with the Torrens over the years?
Speaker 2:Management of the Torrens works across the different agencies and connections to the community and that sort of thing. So one of my first projects which is still finishing, which has been a very long project, I guess, was the Breakout Creek project, which is a special passion of mine and that is being part of the revitalisation of the River Torrens. But also an interesting story because it's not actually the natural Torrens either- yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and other projects I've worked on is the Environmental Flows Program and also managing blue-green algae in Torrens Lake and overseeing a lot of the revegetation and pest control along the River Torrens as well.
Speaker 1:What are the top pests in the Torrens?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to switch this question around, actually, mel, because I know everyone. If you look at the water course, the first thing they're going to say is carp. And I'm going to say carp in the Torrens aren't actually that bad, I know. Well, that's my little personal thought because when we've done the fish, monitoring the diversity of other fish in there is actually really interesting and some of the species, like the threatened freshwater catfish, seems to have such stable populations and breeding populations in the River Torrens that you know people in the River Murray will get jealous.
Speaker 1:Tree. So our general hatred for carp in Adelaide. Maybe it's a bit dramatic.
Speaker 2:Look, you can still hate carp big question. And having done my honours on carp again using the engineering lab and transferring carp from the River Torrens into the engineering lab to do some interesting studies on them, I have a special hatred of carp.
Speaker 1:So you said you had an interest in the environment, but then engineering of how it worked, and then you brought them together with your PhD. Then you did some, I guess, contractor work and then you worked at different agencies. What do you think drew you to the field?
Speaker 2:I think I just love being outdoors and it really is. I love being outdoors, but also the connection that we as humans have to the world around us is probably the driving force and still is so. I have recently taken on a different role, a much saltier role down at Currung, as you mentioned, but it's just interesting understanding that system and learning that system and seeing how people connect to that system as well.
Speaker 1:And how do you define success in the environmental sector?
Speaker 2:There's so many different levels of success. I think you know, as I mentioned before, seeing something tangible happen is really exciting. And working on a project like Breakout Creek for years and years and years and seeing that come, you know, before I even started it was obviously a project. It's been going for decades. But seeing that go from an idea to getting the funding to actually seeing something happen on ground and working with all the people on the way, you know that shows success. But sometimes it can be little things that you manage to get an idea through you know your upper management. Or little things that you manage to get an idea through you know your upper management or little things that you manage to get an idea or fix a problem on site to get through, or an idea to even the minister. So there's lots of little successes on the way.
Speaker 1:Like getting a lamprey statue.
Speaker 2:Well, there are special moments. Yes, and I do believe my highlight of my career so far had been getting a lamprey sculpture at Breakout Creek, as well as lampreys on the surrounding bins.
Speaker 1:The second best bit is my interview from earlier this year with Narongaman Rodney Welsh from the City of Port Adelaide and Enfield and landscape architect Warwick Keats from Wax Design. Now the topic of our interview was about Yipti Yata Balticu, which is the Aboriginal cultural space being built in the heart of Port Adelaide. But we took the interview from an angle of around how we talk about gunner engagement in this development and also the environmental considerations, as there was many that went into this development and you'll find quite an interesting journey in the journey that particularly Rodney took into the environment sector more so and maybe a landscape architect is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the environment sector. So I thought it's a great best bit of the environment sector. So I thought it was a great best bit.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I started in justice mediation, so my first job in justice was mediation between offenders and victims.
Speaker 5:So I spent about 10 years in a mediation role and most of my role was working with the Aboriginal community so that was mainstream and working with the Aboriginal community in a mediation process where we'd, instead of going through a court process, we'd do a mediation process that also ventured across to care and protection as well.
Speaker 5:So I did some work in care and protection between focus on the young person within a family and where they would end up whether the system or back in the kinship process, and also I did some mediation across the family law court also.
Speaker 5:And then, once I left there, I went across the Department of Justice for about 14 years and part of the Department of Justice was working across the state with the goal to keep people out of the justice system, and so that took on a lot of social impacts and a lot of justice impacts to work out what were the cause for people getting to the criminal justice system and then how we would look at programming and processes to change that. And so I spent many years working directly with the community, getting community to identify what they thought were the appropriate outcomes. And then, from a justice point of view, we would then start to implement some of those things things like the Nungu Court, section 9C, which were again mediation or a different process to get people through the justice system, not changing the outcome but the intent to engage people into the justice system and work with them through the justice system to achieve a reasonable outcome that would work for the community and for the broader community.
Speaker 6:Wow.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and so really I've had that sort of role on and off, and that's the sort of role I've brought to council.
Speaker 1:What do you think led you into that kind of path?
Speaker 5:Very interesting. I don't know, to tell you the truth. Look, I went to university just out of the blue. I didn't know why I'd end up in university, because my schooling was pretty bad, to tell you the truth. But I ended up in university and out of university, I actually applied for a job and I didn't know where I'd apply and I guess I just landed there. But my mother also spent probably 20 years prior to me going into it. She worked for the court system as well and she's probably spent about 40, 45 years in the court system herself. So that probably was part of the. I followed her footsteps a little bit. Yeah, yeah, but no, I didn't intend to, but I did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:And I just ended up. I applied for a job and that's where I ended up initially.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 5:But I was probably lucky that even though I've been in mainstream roles all my life, I've been very lucky to engage and work with the Aboriginal community at the grassroots level and lucky enough too that I've also had I've sat with executive ministers and so forth and also had the luxury of working on the ground.
Speaker 5:I suppose part of that too, you know, from a social aspect. My mother brought me up in the Aboriginal community, which is a bonus for me. I love that. She was a connector, my mother, and she connected us to all our family and our kinship. And I guess you know part of a social role too is that, you know, when I come around we have Aboriginal carnivals in Adelaide, both netball and football, and I've been part of that for 25 years, playing and going along, and now my kids are involved in it. So that's a real good connector, a social connector. But also for my work has been, you know, real valuable for me as a person that I've connected with lots of different community, so many relations from across the board, you know, and it's really really given me my identity of who I am.
Speaker 1:How did you go from social justice to now more of a place kind of role that you are in today?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think most of my roles have been, have had a place, leadership sort of feel to it. Yeah, you know, I mean when you give it a title it changes the, it sort of gives you an impression. But I got to a point where I felt it was always battling with justice and not really achieving the outcomes you wanted to achieve. And one of the things I recognized over the years is about you know, it's nice that I can connect and work with community and I can see the wins in it, but when you're talking about big picture, strategic outcomes, we're not really meeting those. I didn't feel we were meeting those, particularly from a justice point of view. So I wanted to opt out of justice and by doing that I left justice and I won a job at Council in a community development role. And so I sat in that role for a little while, for about three, four years, and during that time the project came to play the Cultural Centre, yipti Yadavortiki, and so I sort of transitioned across into that role.
Speaker 5:So I was again Council, working closely with the community, building the capacity of community, which I've been doing all my life and trying to make the best outcomes around policy and process and also engaging non-Aboriginal people to understand Aboriginal culture in a different way. I feel I've done justice when it comes to working with the Aboriginal community and bringing the community together, which is one thing that I think a lot of people don't understand about. We have politics in our Aboriginal community, you know, and we have families that don't meet eye to eye on lots of things, so it was really important to bring the right Aboriginal people together and to be part of a collective, and so that was something that I've had years of experience working with all those different families in different reasons, different ways, and those relationships help bring those people together.
Speaker 1:And same question for you, Warwick. Tell us about your career journey to your role today.
Speaker 7:I'm not sure. Mine goes to the 60s. That was awesome. I suppose mine's probably a completely different journey in so far as born and raised in the UK, so my sort of passion for landscape started very early. I'm a bit weird at 13 I was going to be a landscape architect. I'm now 57, so you can do the maths on how long I've been trying to nurture that career. Don't think I'm anywhere close to finishing that journey yet, which is which is a lovely part of landscape.
Speaker 7:So, really just driven, went to university at Leeds Polytechnic at the time and studied landscape architecture there, practised in the UK for about 10 years and then got the opportunity to work in the Middle East, in the United Arab Emirates, for four years on a particular project Emirates for four years on a particular project. And I think at that time, working with other unique cultures and taking a step back from being the designer and the controller of the outcome and sort of, I suppose, letting go, there was a sense of there's another way of doing landscape and design, and talking to Bedouin cultures and understanding how they lived and thrived in the desert became really interesting for me as just an awakening of a way of thinking about design. So I was then, fortunate enough to, full disclosure, fall in love with a South Australian person, lovely lady, and that brought me to Adelaide. So that sort of arc of then coming to a culture that was familiar from a European perspective but there was this sort of other culture that I had no understanding of has always been sort of in the background and I hadn't really had that opportunity to explore that through the practice worked for HASSEL, a very established architectural multidisciplinary practice in Adelaide, and then in 2006, just wanted to do something different, so set up Wax Design with Amanda Barmer, and I think that allowed that freedom to start to explore those ideas that had been in the back of my head for a long time about collaboration, about engaging with local communities and really starting to use their ideas to drive design thinking forward.
Speaker 7:So we started to sort of do a couple of projects where we called it or it's sort of called Planning for Real, which is essentially we would pick up the design studio, go and work with the community, spend three or four days designing, understanding, being told how a place worked and then coming up with ideas and solutions for the problems that particular communities had. And we we've done that a lot in a lot of regional areas and that that became sort of a core focus of how we practice was how do we work collaboratively? And we've used that same approach for designing play spaces, where, rather than just talk to the parents or teachers or council about how they want a particular play space, we're very focused on talking to the children and young people about how they want to use that space. So I suppose for 30 years I've been trying to work through a process of how to design as a landscape architect, but as collaboratively as as possible and, I suppose, in an authentic way, so I'm not listening and then going yeah, yeah, but I know better. It's. It's about really saying how do we learn from the people, from the place and from the landscape?
Speaker 7:And I suppose, uniquely, yeti Iptipaltuku came along as a tender. So it was council put out a tender for quotation for an architectural, landscape, architectural and civil engineering disciplines to have a go at designing and working with council and the working group and the custodians on the project with Ashley Halliday Architects, and Ash Halliday worked at Hassel when I was at Hassel, so we had already some 20 years ago actually connected and started to talk to each other that it would be fantastic to collaborate when the right project came along. And Ash and I still say and we've said to Rodney many times, this was the project design and Ash and Ashley Halliday to bring together that idea of collaboration and explore it through an authentic co-design process with the custodians, with the council, with members of the Ghana community, to really sort of look at how designing with country as a landscape architect and as for Ashley as an architect, how that has to be done with country in mind and bringing back some of that responsibility for country through the design process.
Speaker 1:The third best bit is my interview from earlier this year with Vicky Jo Russell AM and Jill Woodlands, who are the co-founders of the Nature Festival, which happened in September October this year. The interview was really good and it really just echoed to me how much they are the heart of the environment sector in South Australia and they're involved in so so, so much and have such a long history of passion and dedication to South Australia's environment. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3:I started as an athlete which is very hard to believe now for people who know me, to believe now for people who know me and I thought I was going to be an athlete and go into physio, but I athlete in basketball predominantly. Yeah, lots of sports, but predominantly basketball would have been the one I could have made a career out of. And I got to the end of high school and I thought, you know, I just didn't know, I didn't know if it was the one and I didn't get into it. I could have gone into podiatry and moved over, but I thought you know what I'm just going to, I'm so young, I'm just going to throw it open and I'm going to go with things that I'm passionate about. So at university I went with biology and psychology and my first degree was a double degree in those two, which was totally the way to go. And during that degree it was like, well, I want to help people and I want to help nature. What do I do? But then I worked out very clearly that to help people, one of the best things you can do is look after nature. It sustains us all in all aspects of our living. So I went and did a conservation and land management degree after that.
Speaker 3:And then I traveled Australia, because I'd spent six years but really, if you think about year 11 and 12, eight years at a desk and I wanted to see this stuff for real. So I volunteered and traveled around Australia in a combi, which I would highly recommend to people who are passionate about this. It really made things real. And you know it's 35,000 kilometers or whatever, and you see amazing, magnificent things, but you also see there's not a square inch of this country that hasn't been affected by us as well. So the enormity of what was ahead was also made very real. And on my way back down on the east coast, I was sitting there on a creek thinking what am I going to do with my life? Because I was 23. It's a great time to really think about that. And I thought right, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend the rest of my life looking after the biodiversity of the continent of Australia, and that's pretty much what I've done. So what a privilege that is.
Speaker 3:I came back to Adelaide. I got married to the man I was engaged to around this trip, which was rather extraordinary, and I had my first job at Con Council, so Conservation Council of South Australia, on a front desk, job information, information typing, just like get in there, find out, you know, get your first foot in the door. What an amazing experience that year was because I learnt and met so many amazing people. I learnt all about what was going on in the movement. It was so exciting and inspiring. You know, you'd come in and there'd be groups meeting over here for some sort of protest and then you'd have the planning group and then you'd have First Nations come in. Then you have a media interview happen in the library and it's like this is my place. I had definitely found my tribe and my home and actually I went.
Speaker 3:I got a scholarship when I was 28 to go to the States to spend some time with WWF overseas and I rang so pathetic, but I rang Con Council to hear the voice of the voicemail because I just missed the place so much. So, yeah, I worked there in that information officer job and then I was very lucky to get the job as a Threatened Species Network Coordinator working for WWF. And, yeah, a lot has happened since then. Was that based sorry, in Australia for WWF? Yes, it was based in Australia, predominantly in southeastern Australia. And then I worked for Con Council a little bit later on. That job actually went for 14 years but many things happened in it, so it wasn't one job, it wasn't one project. I actually did a number of collaborations with Tony Flarty, who works here at Green Adelaide. So we co-founded Dragon Search together and also Making Waves, a marine and coastal radio show, and so there were lots of little bits along the way that obviously we're on grasslands and so lots of bits in there. But that was the overall job. And then, yeah, I worked at Con Council as a conservation program manager for a while.
Speaker 3:Then I worked at the zoo. So I was six years at the zoo, first as a conservation polisatis and Adelaide's. Well, the zoo is both, you know, monarto and Adelaide. But yeah, south Australia Zoo, yeah, zoo ZSA. And then I was the I was a director there in conservation policy sustainability. That was an amazing journey because the zoo sustainability challenge is quite an extraordinary and bespoke one, you know. And then I'm very fortunate to come to work for Trees for Life. Yeah, while I've been in that role I've co-founded with my colleague here, jill, and also with Ryan Hubbard, and Amber Cronin joined us very early in the program as well. We're the four co-founders of the Nature Festival and here we are. So I still.
Speaker 3:I have other roles at the moment. Still, I'm the chair of the Parks and Wilderness Council for South Australia. I'm also the chair of the Parks and Wilderness Council for South Australia. I'm also the chair of the National Recovery Team for the South Eastern Rentail, black Cockatoo, and I also have a consultancy called VJ Consult. It's primarily aimed at supporting conservation groups trying to do strategic planning or reviewing things that need someone technical to understand it and also happy to work with their budgets. Just so, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. It's hard, it's heartbreaking. Grief is definitely something you have to learn to manage and manage responsibly, with a great deal of self-care. But you meet some of the best people in the world. You see some of the most wonderful things and I've never been lost nature and I get teary already it's so early in the podcast teary. You know, if nature's your tender, you'll never get lost, yeah.
Speaker 1:When you say grief, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3:Well, grief is very real for people who care. There's a great quote actually that says, basically, to be a conservationist is to walk through a world full of wounds and it's very obvious to any of us that can see them. But I've seen many. I've had many disappointments in planning or policy or processes or projects or funding or whatever where great things could have happened, should have happened, great protection was promised or whatever, and didn't come through and you have to stay optimistic. But I've also seen I mean I've been doing this now for 30 years I've seen sites that have been valuable and important to me and to the world eroded.
Speaker 3:Probably the first really big experience I had with grief was when I was working on the Mount Lofty Range's Southern Emurin Project where emurins had been found and I won't give any specifics of this, it would not be wise to do so but it was found on a private property and we were all delighted with that and we thought the landholder was too, and the next time we went out there they absolutely demolished the site. My lifetime we have known that this is not the right thing to do and that this is not in our long-term best interests, and yet we continue to make the sort of decisions that we do, so even though I know people love nature and that's something as a Nature Festival Chair I've been absolutely reinforced with. We love nature and yet somehow we continue to make decisions that aren't in keeping with our true hearts, so let's hope that by the time I finish this lifetime, that might be different.
Speaker 1:And Jill same question how did you get into the sector and how did you end up where you are today?
Speaker 6:A very different story to Vicky Jo. I grew up in Sydney in the middle of a plant nursery. My parents were gardeners but I actually studied nursing when I first left school and then I travelled for 18 months and came back and then decided I guess the garden was calling and I studied horticulture in Sydney and then I travelled again and worked in Cyprus and England and then I moved to South Australia in 1990. So I developed, I guess, a horticultural career all over working Adelaide Hills, plains Coast, et cetera Very much focused on building people up as gardeners.
Speaker 6:And then when I was about 40, when my son was five, I wanted to see what was beyond the garden fence, I guess, and I went to uni and I studied environment studies. So it's now environmental management and policy and then I did honours in natural resource management engagement. Because for me it was really important because I had the context of a garden and the fact that nature is a journey of a lifetime but it usually starts in the garden. And for me it was really important to be able to keep switching between understanding bigger environmental challenges but also the fact that I could keep coming back into the garden. So it allows me to actually operate at different scales as well, and it also allows me to cope with the grief Vicky Jo was talking about, because the garden always beckons.
Speaker 6:But through studies I got a position at the Conservation Council where I met Vicky Jo. I worked as the Natural Resource Management Facilitator for 12 years and then I also started work managing the Diggers Garden Shop in the Botanic Gardens. So I continued with both roles part-time and then I started work with Vicki Jo we will be talking about this but the Nature of South Australia project and then amongst it at Nature Conservation Society and then, moving on to the Nature Festival, I'm also Deputy Branch Head of the Mediterranean Garden Society, so I helped form that as a founder 22 years ago. So I'm very much involved still in the garden world as well.
Speaker 1:Would you say you're pouring in Fred into the garden world, reflecting on the fact that you said your parents brought you up in a nursery?
Speaker 6:Yeah, so, although I didn't, as most young people, you don't always follow what you are expected to follow, but I guess an innate love of the garden and nature. I guess because I used to go and talk to my mum after school and she was propagating plants outside. So it was always well my dad would take me in his little red truck to visit garden designers, and so I always went. So my world was already firmly fixed, I guess, in the garden and also beyond, and I probably also have only just kind of just realised that my dad was the ultimate connector because he had relationships with so many people around Sydney, from gardeners to quite well-known garden designers and landscape architects. I guess building those connections were, I guess, something I cherish but also see again firmly through the eyes of being a gardener.
Speaker 1:What drew you? Obviously you were surrounded by it growing up. I guess what made you not rebel and go in that path? I guess what drew you to the field? Was it just through your parents pretty much it was their world or was it a different reason that drew you to continue down that field of in the environment sector horticultural, and then going on to more environmental studies?
Speaker 6:Well, I think it was a similar age to Vicky Jo. Well, I think I was 22 when I in England and, thinking the way we did health, I couldn't stand the idea of being inside actually, and my parents had a plant nursery in Sydney and they wanted to go on a long break and because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I said, okay, I'll manage the business while you go. And I think that's something I think is a thread through my life in terms of having a crack at something You're not quite sure, put yourself in it, and then I realised how much I loved it and then I went on to study horticulture. I realised how much I loved it and then I went on to study horticulture. So I, as Vicky Jo said earlier, I've never considered myself on a particular career path, but often having a crack and saying yes to opportunities helps so that it's actually not a linear pathway but different. And actually, since I moved to South Australia, most of the work I've been involved in has just been through word of mouth.
Speaker 1:And how, vicky Jo, do you define success in your field? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:Impact. So there's definitely some things that I'm incredibly proud of that were just plain effective in securing a biodiversity outcome and supporting others so increasingly and maybe it was more partnering when I was younger, but now it's more supporting but seeing other people succeed and flourish and go on and have their own impacts, that's a huge sense of pride when that happens.
Speaker 1:How do you manage because sometimes impact and influence can take a while to see? How do you manage the lack of instant gratification um to keep you going?
Speaker 3:ah, well, interestingly, I'm of a generation that's not used to instant gratifications. I don't have that problem, was that I just um, I'm reflecting on the fact that I have two young children. Yeah, you've got to be patient, far out Empathy that's really the crux. I think being empathetic allows you to have just to take your time and look. I think there'll be some things that I would have influenced, that I'll be dead and I won't know that I've influenced. So you've got to be. You've just got to trust. Trust in the process that you're doing good things with good people for good reasons.
Speaker 6:Don't forget, though, the importance of celebrating For every the Sims. I think that's the thing that's really really important. It doesn't matter how small it is or even just celebrate the crap yeah, just don't forget You're not trying to have some hero moment. It's really important to, yeah, just have a chat with people along the way, go out to a pub or a picnic or whatever it is, but, yeah, or celebrate the ridiculous, some of the ridiculous things that might happen in Parliament even, yeah, and the fourth best bit for this episode is my interview with soil ecologist Kate Matthews from Flinders University.
Speaker 1:I think this one really shows that academia is a path that you could take and maybe Kate's journey so far into the academia world it might inspire those students of today of a path they want to go down.
Speaker 4:I actually didn't really understand what the environment was growing up. So in my gap year I did a little trip to Peru and did some volunteering in the Amazon rainforest and there was these amazing people from all over the world researching the plants and the wildlife and I remember there was even people studying birds and I got to do bird banding and such with them and I realized when I was there I was like, wow, you could actually do this for a job. That's pretty cool. And so the following year I enrolled in a Bachelor with Wildlife Conservation Biology, and then through that I decided to go on and do my honours in soil science and then afterwards I had a little break.
Speaker 4:I worked at a place called TURN, which stands for Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. I did a little bit of time there and then there was an opportunity to start my PhD, partnered with the CSIRO, and I couldn't say no. And so I started that at University of Adelaide but then ended up moving to Flinders following my primary supervisor, tim Cavagnaro Shout out, he is a legend. And yeah, now I'm doing my PhD in soil ecology.
Speaker 1:And what? So you finished high school and took a gap year, went to Peru. It sounds amazing. Um, when you were wrapping up high school, did you know, besides your gap year, what? What was next? Or was that? That whole year was trying to trying to figure that out that whole year was?
Speaker 4:it was, yeah, it was saving up money. I worked, um, actually, my mom had a little cafe at the time, and so I was behind the counter making coffees, running around, saving up money so that I could go on this trip to Peru. And I had actually enrolled in a Bachelor of Biomedical Science after my year 12, my 12th year because I had a general interest in biology, but I didn't really know where I wanted to go with that, and so the Peru trip was really about getting out there. I'd never left Australia before, I'd never gone on a trip by myself before, and so, yeah, I just wanted to go and see a bit of the world, and once I it was really serendipitous once I went there and realized, wow, you can, you can study the environment, um, and get to be out in it all and be taking data, uh, I kind of had this realization of I need to do this for my life, and I actually ended up switching from the biomedical degree to wildlife conservation three days before classes started. What a rush.
Speaker 1:And so you went from that wildlife conservation then you went into the more soil ecology. What drew you to, I guess, soil?
Speaker 4:Soil, isn't it just so sexy, a little charismatic, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So it started as a general interest in the environment and yes, I don't know if other people feel this, but I feel like you go in with a general interest of, yeah, okay, I'm gonna go study the environment because I love the environment, and then slowly you follow your areas of interest right, and so for me that was plants, and in third year I do a lot of plant subjects and I remember I sat in this lecture about mycorrhizal fungi and their connection with plants and how they have the symbiotic and mutualistic associations and this whole world of soil I had never even considered and it kind of was like a light bulb moment for me of like, wow, this seems really cool.
Speaker 4:And at the end of the lecture my now supervisor, tim Cavagnaro, who was giving the lecture, he said don't count out soil for your honours projects. If you're interested, come have a chat. And so I did, and I really have never looked back. It's just I feel like soil is often overlooked when we're talking about the environment and be that natural systems or agronomy or anything in between, and so it seemed like a really nice spot to be in, for me at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you make the decision to keep going down the PhD path?
Speaker 4:Look, it's a little bit silly, but I kind of had this thought. I spoke to a lot of people right and I did a lot of volunteering, like with DAW and all around the joint in wetlands and on the Manabunga project, and I spoke to a lot of senior ecologists and I asked them why they hadn't had or hadn't done a PhD, and a lot of them had said you know, I'll get back to it. I'd always planned on doing it, but you know, life got in the way. I had a wife and a kid or a partner and I needed to look after my finances and we know famously that PhDs don't actually it's not a lot of money that you're getting from them.
Speaker 4:And so I was like I love soil, some people don't want to continue their studies and I still felt like that energy for what I was doing and I really wanted to do that and I thought, why not? Why, if I put it off, maybe I won't come back to it? And actually right now I'm in a position in my life where this kind of this amount of money is actually a good amount of money for me to live on as a student who has not been living on a lot of money. So um it kind of yeah it was, I was still interested, it was like, why not? And also it was livable for me. So I'm pretty lucky in that respect yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Take the opportunities when you can. And obviously you can see that, um, yeah, based on your own situation, and you had to take it and sort of be like, oh, maybe later. And then you know, 20 years later you might not have done it still.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, and maybe I would have too as well. You know, like you can't know, but for me it just felt right to do it now.
Speaker 1:Define success in your field? So I guess you're more in the research for the environment sector at the moment, and how would you define success in your field?
Speaker 4:my field. I feel successful when I'm working towards something that I find meaningful. Uh, and for me, I think soil is that sweet spot of like huge impact, like huge reach, because soil is everywhere and the research I'm conducting may or may not be able to be applied in many, many different places, and for me that feels like a success in a way. I mean, it's hard not to get caught up in the traditional sense of academic success, be that writing papers and getting research grants and whatnot, but I feel for me, as long as I'm still enjoying it, then I'm feeling productive and hitting goals, while, of course, also looking after myself and feeling connected with my friends and family, then that is a successful career for me.
Speaker 1:And that wraps up the four best career highlights from 2024. I hope the diversity of those highlights helped our listeners, particularly those who are wrapping up high school, help them figure out maybe what's next for them if they wanted to be in the environment sector in South Australia. And that brings us to an end of 2024. Thank you for listening to the Green Adelaide podcast. I'm your host, melissa Martin. This podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia. If you have any podcast topics or interview suggestions, please reach out to Green Adelaide. I would love to hear them and I will catch you guys next year, 2025, for our next episode. Happy New Year, merry Christmas.