Victoria Laurie’s love for, and dedication to, the natural environment and justice shines throughout her local voluntary work and her career as a journalist and TV presenter. She is also the author of The Kimberley – Australia’s Last Great Wilderness and The South West -Australia’s Biodiversity Hotspot . Victoria has been a Walkley Award finalist three times and is a recipient of an Equal Opportunity Media Award and numerous state awards.
Her home in Gooseberry Hill is beautiful, with views of trees and flowers through every window. It’s made of rammed earth and is solar passive. Water tanks and vegetable gardens are part of her family’s sustainable lifestyle. Her husband, Andy, is studying regenerative agriculture as a way of improving soil health and keeping water on their property, which suffered in the past from compacting and over-grazing.
She’s the Chair of the Kalamunda Environmental Advisory Committee. Over her six years on the committee, she says she’s pleased to have played a role in helping shape the City’s key environmental policies including the Urban Forest Strategy, the Local Biodiversity Strategy, the Local Environment Strategy, the Tree Retention Policy and the Climate Change Action Plan.
Victoria is also an active member of the Friends of Kadina Brook. Local neighbours were concerned that frogs and other pond life were being affected when downpours of rain caused the creek to flow too fast, flushing tadpoles downstream. In partnership with the City of Kalamunda, the Friends Group has secured a $40,000 grant (over 4 years) from the Community Rivercare program to implement stream stabilisation strategies – such as riffles and plantings that slow creek flow and provide habitat. ‘Apart from bringing life back to our local creek, it’s been a great way to meet the neighbours, because after digging and planting, we all have a cuppa and morning tea and talk to each other’.
As past president of the Nature Reserves Preservation Group, she says she admires the NRPG for more than three decades of dedicated work as a strong local advocacy group in the City of Kalamunda. ‘One of the things I love about local bush care and advocacy’ she said, ‘is that you get to meet the real local heroes like Elaine Sargent, who has devoted many thousands of hours to her local creek line at Poison Gully with the Friends of Poison Gully. People like her make an outstanding unpaid contribution to our local environment’.
‘One of the things I value most about Australia’, Victoria said, ‘is that we live in a place where, with persistence and pairing up with a few like-minded people, you really can make a difference to your local environment’.
Victoria, your love for this land, and your dedication and passion for a sustainable, decarbonised and just world, is an inspiration. Thank you!