Hemlock in the morning, Human/Nature in the evening

This Sunday was all about Landcare! Kicking off the morning with Whitewater Creek Landcare Group pulling weeds including thistle, forget-me-not and hemlock (toxic!). I got a bit of time in my own garden mulching the vegie garden with pea straw from Blackmans Bay's underground pea straw dealer.

Then off to Nandroya Vineyard in Margate for a volunteers week celebration of our local Landcare volunteers. It was a great pleasure to catch up with many passionate people putting their energy in to conserving our natural environments. We all get a tremendous amount of work done, the vast majority of which is volunteer labour. Jill Jones, Biodiversity Officer for Kingborough Council, does a tremendous job facilitating the many local Landcare groups' ability to work on council land. I'm truly grateful for Jill's energy and for the council staffing someone for this role.

We were joined by a special guest, Jane Rawson, who gave a short talk in the mid-afternoon. Jane's a local author and environmentalist, with a background that includes a stint as environment and energy editor at The Conversation, travel writing for Lonely Planet, and a string of novels including the Aurealis-winning From the Wreck. These days she's managing editor at Island magazine and doing a PhD in creative writing at UTAS.

Jane and Jill talked about Jane's most recent book Human/Nature: On life in a wild world. It's a book that pokes at some of the unspoken assumptions underpinning Australian nature conservation. The idea of a pristine pre-human nature we can somehow get back to, the role of nostalgia in shaping what we choose to protect, and the awkward question of why we care so much about some species and not others.

Judging by Jane's quite amusing talk, I think I'm going to enjoy reading her book!