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My name's Tim. I don't think there's any particular name for the role I play.
What I do is I help land managers look after the natural
value in their bushland and hopefully keep it that way.
I've studied quite a few different disciplines and over quite some time as well.
And I've been, I think, working out what I really
wanted to do through that time - things like zoology,
soil science and plant nutrition, and human ecology and
then the last course I did was a diploma in Applied
Science (Horticulture) which majored in natural area
management and sort of moved into that field from there.
Most of my clients are government agencies, shire offices, the Botanic
Gardens and Parks Authority, Department of Planning and Infrastructure.
Where they have areas that are natural areas to manage, someone needs to be there, needs to
be 'callable' to be there to make sure that the native plants get the jump on the weeds.
I'm here to control some Watsonias growing in the bushland. The process
is - know where they are or know where you need to go looking.
Then I'll be choosing the right sort of equipment
to do the job - depends on the size of the weed
infestation, the type of chemical I'm going to have
to use, the type of nozzle, the relevant safety gear.
A lot of the herbicides are actually fairly low on the sort of hazard rating
for humans but again, you need to know what you're doing - very important.
I'm lucky enough actually to have walked probably
more square metres of the park on a regular
basis than all the staff here, so part of my
role here is to report on any things I've seen.
There's a couple of plants here that I've found that
one of them on this scarp hadn't been found before.
You know, I just focus on one thing but one of those is
to walk through the bushland and basically check every
square metre because I'm often looking for plants that
are literally no bigger, you know, than a 10 cent piece.
This is a native spear grass here.
That's a beautiful native grass, that is. It's just gorgeous.
It'll slowly but surely fill out and little islands of it will spread and the
thing is, whenever you take a weed out, you've actually left a bit of a space
so what you hope is something native is going to
actually be able to drop its seed and get going.
So you can't do anything without thinking about what's
going to happen next. That's the most important thing.
I do get to spend a lot of time on my own, you know,
sort of 8-10 hours a day walking around in the bush.
I'd say it's a lovely place to be - plenty of time to reflect.
In the city, there's a lot of removal from kind
of natural things and actually being in the bush
I don't know if it's just breathing the air - or just seeing live things, it's ...
you get, I don't know a feeling of permanence and regeneration and a sense of place.
We're here at the Kennedy Fountain.
We're going to go up here and continue with bridal
veil control across the front of the scarp here.
It's probably about eight hectares. It's pretty vertical. Some of it's ...
actually is vertical. So, yes, it's challenging.
The work is highly variable.
Sometimes it's very difficult.
Occasionally it could appear tedious,
but when you're doing it well, and it is making a difference,
then it motivates you and gets you through those temporary, short-term challenges.
Your attitude is everything.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care so ...
that's the thing. If you care about it, are passionate about it,
get some knowledge and maybe just talk to the right people.
By going into business for myself which is a bit of a
leap, you know, I basically, at least tripled my income.
I'm not really sure what I get from sort of natural areas
but it just seems to refresh me and connect me with ...
I don't know ... who I am and I just want them to be here for my kids.
They already love a lot of the things I do and, yeah,
I just want to share that with them and have somewhere to show and, yeah, I don't know.