Wheatbelt NRM

Maren Lavery looks after the people at Wheatbelt NRM, the Northam organisation that has been working on the Avon River Basin since the 1990s. In the film she introduces herself as the HR manager. The organisation was started so the rivers and streams that run into the Avon would be looked after, on the belief that if the water is clean then the animals, the plants and the country around them have a chance. Most of the work is with private landholders spread across the basin, and with the local groups who want the same care taken on their own stretch of it.

The work she is proudest to talk about is the cultural burning. The Noongar Boodja Ranger Team, which Wheatbelt NRM has been building since 2014 so Aboriginal people in the region could work on country, carries the knowledge of those cool burns. Maren says there are fourteen rangers on the team now, and she calls that number a milestone. They revegetate, they collect seed, and they burn, and she talks about the jobs as a way of keeping people in the district. Some of the people they employ have come through the justice system and would have struggled to find work anywhere else. Schools send young people in as junior rangers, and a few of them have stayed with the team after they finished school. When she talks about the future, she talks about farms that can still make a decent living, because farming is what the economy out there rests on, and a viable farm is what keeps the towns going. If someone is thinking of moving to the Wheatbelt, her advice is to put yourself out there. She thinks you will be surprised how many people with the same interests are already living there.