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.

Craig Kenny and his partner Annie Lewis live on a 20-hectare property in Trida, where a third of the land is committed to long-term revegetation and ecological regeneration, an effort now two decades in the making.

Both are active members of the Mount Worth & District Landcare Group, with Craig serving as Treasurer.

Professionally, Craig is a consultant to local government, specialising in strategic planning, social infrastructure, business case development, and feasibility studies.

Until recently, he served as a director of the Inner North Community Foundation, an organisation focused on pathways to employment and community-led social justice initiatives. He was also a long-standing director—serving for 13 years—of a small not-for-profit foundation supporting village-based economic development in Timor Leste. That initiative focused on reforestation and the sale of Gold Standard-certified carbon credits to generate income for more than 1,000 farming families.

Craig has a strong interest in the energy transition currently underway in Gippsland and is exploring ways this transformation can deliver enduring community benefits. Get in touch if you want to be involved or have any ideas!

In 1993 Carolyn and her partner Clancy purchased 68 acres at Buln Buln East.  It was a steep learning curve with the property infested with ragwort and blackberries.  New landowners in the area at the time were keen to see ragwort controlled and were frustrated by absentee landowners with infested properties.  Early support from DPI and Landcare encouraged the community to form a Landcare group.  Springsure Hill Landcare group was formed in 1993, named after Springsure Hill, the highest point in the area, with Carolyn the first president.  With support from Gippslandcare and DPI, the group provided weed information and assistance to those who needed help, ran field days, wrote and distributed a local newsletter, and sourced funding for Landcare projects.  

In 1999 a part time Landcare Weed Officer job was created with support from State Government funding and accommodation from Baw Baw Shire Council.  Carolyn was successful in securing this role. The focus was - to encourage landowners to treat weeds on their roadsides with provision of herbicide and loan of spray units to help, and to provide information to landowners about weed control and property management.  In 2004, Springsure Hill Landcare group won the State Weed Buster Award.

While working part time, Carolyn completed – Advanced Diploma Natural Resource Management, Diploma Agriculture Beef, Prograze and Beefcheque courses, Whole Farm Planning, Cert 3 in horticulture.  An EMS was developed for their property. She also completed a Rural Leadership course funded through Landcare and WGCMA, around 2010 and won a WGCMA Lyrebird Award in recognition of her significant contribution to protection of the region’s natural resources

In 2000 and 2009 additional land was purchased adjoining the original farm, covering 200 acres of the original Springsure Hill Farm.  The property has been improved with weeds controlled, gullies fenced, shelterbelts planted, water systems installed, pastures improved and rotational grazing systems established.  

The Weed Officer job evolved and with the finish of Landcare Weed Facilitator funding, the role became a Council Natural Environment officer job with work including – roadside weed control, fire recovery, urban wetland establishment and maintenance, establishing and supporting Friends groups, maintenance of council’s bushland reserves and offset sites.

In 2021, after 22 years, Carolyn retired from Baw Baw Shire.  She is involved with Landcare, Warragul Beefcheque group, West Gippsland Seedbank and the Rokeby Crossover Friends Group and now the LCLN Board.

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.

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.