The club invites guest speakers to talk at meetings thoroughout the year.
2024 Guest Speakers:
July 27th
Peter Copping, Environmental Officer with Logan City Council
Peter’s talk will look at what we have to conserve in Logan City, where in the city it is, and why private land plays an important role. He will then discuss what support the Land for Wildlife program offers in more detail
August 31st
Brett Malcolm of Queensland Frog Society and Brett Finds Frogs.
Brett will talk about frogs in our gardens
October 26th
Sarah, Project Officer, Fire Ants Suppression Team (FAST), National Fire Ant Eradication Program
Sarah will give a general presentation about fire ants with some extra information about the impact on our activities. Sarah will also have information to give away.
2023 Guest Speakers are as follows:
Mar-25th
Linda Brennan of ECOBOTANICA. Author of “A Delicious Bunch.”
(any word that is underlined, click on for more information)
Linda has a passion for good food grown and prepared locally and enjoys helping others create their own bountiful garden. Her childhood in Victoria was spent in the vegetable garden and wandering the bush with her parents, picking wild foods, harvesting honey from her dad’s many hives and growing almost all their vegetables and fruit on a ¼ acre block. She even proudly entered her flower or vegetable exhibits in the annual Latrobe Valley Horticultural Shows. This helped to sow the seeds of a love of nature and the potential for productive gardens.
Linda has been facilitating workshops and professional development courses for over 2 decades. She is also in demand to present at events like Parks Alive and the Queensland Garden Expo, helping people create sustainable gardens and healthy lives. Linda ready to help others, through her workshops and garden consultations, to achieve beautifully flourishing and productive gardens.
These are some of her formal qualifications…
- Master of Environmental Education from Griffith University (Honours)
- Certificate of University Teaching
- Diploma Applied Science (Horticulture)
- Organic Agriculture Certificate
- Permaculture Teaching and Design Registration and Qualifications with Bill Mollison, the permaculture guru.
- Waste and resource educators certificate
- Food Safety Supervisor
- Midwifery and General Nursing qualifications
Linda will talk about planting flowers to encourage the beneficial insects, and others to discourage the pests. She will discuss bird-attractors, decoy flowers, and which flowers to grow amongst your vegetables. Linda’s presentation will include the use of biodynamic preparations, companion planting and protecting fruit trees.
Apr-29th
Dr John Quayle, Veterinarian & Environmental Lawyer, permaculture principles practitioner, and proponent of regenerative agriculture.
John began his working life as a vet, working in QLD and the UK. He was the founder of the Wynnum Manly veterinary hospital.
John branched into environmental protection, becoming a commercial lawyer in this field. He continues to develop economic and environmentally sustainable business models. A significant amount of his work has been in Asia, providing a multicultural aspect to his knowledge and experience. John also works with Australian oil and gas companies, Native Title, and Cultural Heritage sites.
John has followed on from the eco-sustainable ideas of the previous owner of his property, Bill Mollison (co- founder of permaculture). The estate, Mariefields, was the first permaculture farm in the world. John’s developments, among other things, include the creation of wildlife corridors, the protection of creeks from cattle, the construction of bird islands, the planting of thousands of food trees for koalas, and Manuka ti-trees for the apiary.
Whatever the size of your property, John can show you how to use eco-sustainable permaculture principles to get the best from your space. John will talk about regenerative agriculture and the cost benefits of sustainability. Hear how you can develop a carbon sequestration program and increase soil carbon on both large and small blocks.
May 27th–
Jane Milburn OAM of Textile Beat.
Jane believes in the power of adaptation and values authenticity, creativity, agency and purpose. Jane set up Textile Beat in 2013, bringing together her agriculture, leadership and communications experience to explore and share ways to reduce our material footprint. She advocates for slow clothing everyday practices as the antidote to fast fashion. This work resulted in Jane being awarded an OAM, a Medal of the Order of Australia, for service to fashion sustainability in 2022. Jane is a 2019 Churchill Fellow, a graduate of the Australian Rural Leadership Program (c16) and author of Slow Clothing: finidng meaning in what we wear. She was instrumental in helping reactivate the Rural Press Club of Queensland as a leading agribusiness network, being awarded life membership in 2009.
Permaculture in the Wardrobe.
Dressing is integral to life. Skin is our largest organ and we can think about clothes doing for us on the outside what food does inside. They protect and warm our bodies, and influence the way we feel and present to the world. And dressing is an agricultural act, if we want to wear natural fibres rather than plastic fibres.
Permaculture is an endless design process for living alongside nature in regenerative, resilient and bountiful ways. Although I’ve known about permaculture for decades, I recently did a Permaculture Design Course and Teaching Permaculture Teachers course at Northey Street City Farm. This affirmed the ethics and principles that I’ve applied through my slow clothing work for the past decade. Permaculture applies to clothes, equally as it does to gardens and society.
Jun 24th–
Ellen Bowman. Substation 33.
Recycling Electronics.
Jul 29th –
Josephine Romero. Gold Coast Butterflies.
Learn about the butterfly life cycle and see butterfly eggs, caterpillars and chrysalis that may hatch before your eyes.
Learn how to help with Butterfly Conservation in your own backyard.
The Butterfly House is a sustainable habitat for many different species of Australian Butterflies. The species and number of butterflies may vary due to seasonal changes and weather conditions.
Sep 30th –
Anthony Hill (aka Captain Plastic). Anthony Hill AKA ‘Captain Plastic’ does such amazing ‘on the ground’ work, travelling Australia, to visit communities and schools, educating many on how to reduce plastic.
Nov 25th–
Christmas Breakup Party