CMA Landcare Legends Podcast series
For decades landholders and community members have been investing in Landcare in our catchment.
Far from the planting a few trees here and there, the Landcare Legends we found for this series have taken their commitment to supporting the land, water and biodiversity on their properties and local areas seriously enough to be racking up decades of Landcare activites.
This series was produced in partnership with a booklet showcasing these Landcare Legends which was launched at the 2025 National Landcare Conference in Queensland on 21-24 September.
Originally created to celebrate 10 years of Victorian Landcare Grant investment activities, from 2012-2022, it evolved into a celebration of our region’s landcarers who have investment many tens of thousands of dollars more in their activities than what the grants provided.
READ THE CELEBRATION BOOKLET
A series of Pondcast episodes, with interviews conducted by Marius Cuming, are now available online via the website or the usual streaming platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify
You can listen to the episodes below by clicking on one of the episode tiles below.
In this episode, we meet Peter Armstrong, who with his wife Jo, runs a mixed farming operation north of Streatham in south-west Victoria.
About 30 years ago, Peter and Jo began planting trees on their farm to try and deal with salinity issues in their gully areas. Since then, they’ve planted between 250 and 1000 trees a year and seen an improvement in the land’s health and diversity of animals they see on the farm, but it has also meant an odd saline issue has raised its head!
In this episode, we meet Bobbie and Angus McLean from Pigeon Ponds, north of Coleraine in south-west Victoria.
When Angus McLean and his wife, Bobbie, moved back to the Pigeon Ponds district in 2014 and purchased a farm hosting almost the entire population of the region’s rabbits, they could not have realized how much change they could influence on a property in just 12 years through fencing, revegetation and regeneration. With a new bridge, watering system that lifts water almost 80 metres up hillsides, and a creek area that is now an abundance of regeneration, the McLeans are now farming in an environment that is safer, healthier and more productive than ever.
In this episode, we meet Hamish Bailey from Park Hill on the Wannon River, west of Hamilton in south-west Victoria.
By his own admission, Hamish Bailey went hard early when he returned to the family farm 20 years ago with his fencing and revegetation works. It’s something he now looks back on with pride because he can see the benefit of that investment of time and effort on the banks of the Wannon River, across the visual landscape of his farm and in the win-win situation he finds himself with a more productive farm and increased biodiversity. It’s also given him the knowledge that the trees he continues to plant today, will be worth it in generations to come.
In this episode, we meet John Keillor, who with his wife Brigita, runs the grazing property Cashmore Park west of Portland in south-west Victoria.
In John’s family, the connection to environmental support through field naturalism goes back to the 1900s, and grazing on some of his property has the longest in the history of Victoria, going back the very first settler farmers in 1834. And about 30 years ago, John started his own impact on the local landscape when he headed up the Tarragal Landcare group which took a landscape-scale approach to reversing the clearing of vegetation in the local area.
In this episode, we meet Morna and Jeff Semmens who live south of Mount Napier, in the Hamilton region of south-west Victoria.
Morna and Jeff are first generation farmers, who bought a stony block of land covered bracken that had winds that blew from one end to other with the aim of giving their children a grounded upbringing. 30 years later, they have become local leaders in Landcare who drove the need for a local facilitator of works, experts in all sorts of techniques to get trees to grow in a challenging landscape – including using a crowbar – have a crop-producing of Wattles plantation, and created a productive farm landscape which leaves a sustainably legacy for the future.
In this episode, we meet Jane O’Beirne who farms on the banks of the Hopkins River near Warrnambool in south-west Victoria.
For the last 25 years, planting sections of the banks of the Hopkins River has been Jane’s goal – bit by bit joining the sections together form the Hopkins Falls all along the length of her farm to replace what was once removed. To get the 2000-odd trees a year into the ground, Jane has called on the community, utilizing family, neighours, and school groups to ensure the plants get into the ground so they can begin looking after themselves. It’s paying off in more than just improved production on-farm, the waterway is healthier too, as evidenced the platypus who appear at the end of this interview!
In this episode, we meet Mary Styles from the Nelson Coastcare Inc group from the far south-west corner of Victoria west of Portland.
Mary and her merry band of over 40 volunteers are the guardians of the Ramsar-listed wetland area of Long Swamp and the Glenelg Estuary. She declares it the last wilderness frontier in Victoria and the crew from Nelson Coastcare take their responsibility for caring for, understanding, monitoring and mapping of the area in a variety of ways but with the common goal of protecting it for future generations and for the benefit of the environment and tourism in the local area.
