Life Members

Since 1980, ALEC has recognised major contributions by individuals and groups through Life Membership or Silver Bilby awards, albeit intermittently. In the wake of its 40th year celebrations, ALEC is retrospectively awarding and acknowledging the individuals and groups that have contributed strategic, impactful input to one or more of ALEC’s focus areas.

ALEC Life Members. Click here to see recipients of the Silver Bilby award.

Melinda Hillery

Life Member 2002

Mel was an organisational rock for ALEC during the late 1990s and early 2000s, most of it as Convenor of the Management Committee (now Board). She ensured ALEC met its legal obligations as an Incorporated Association and stayed financially viable, allowing ALEC to deliver its vital campaigns. “Make no mistake, without Mel and many other volunteers like her, ALEC would not exist,” says Glenn Marshall, one of the many coordinators that Mel worked with.

Mel arrived in town in 1996 to take up a job as a Technical Officer at CSIRO. She had kindled an interest in environmental advocacy at high school in Sydney when she attended an inter school forum on ozone depletion.  This led to studying environmental science at university and continuing local environmental campaigns as a member of a tiny but active neighbourhood group in Sydney called MAD (making a difference) – a group of uni students who became lifelong friends.  On arrival in Alice Mel quickly gravitated to ALEC, “I went to lunch with Coordinator Georgie Stewart and some committee members on my first day at work”.  She joined the management committee by December of that year, joining long term ALEC stalwarts like Terry Mahney, Ilan Warchivker, Clive Rosewarne, Craig James, Katrina Budrikis, Meg Mooney, Theresa Nano and Tara Geldard.

By 1997 she was Convenor and held that role on-and-off through to 2001 (with time-out working on her PhD in termite biodiversity). Other key committee members in this time included Scott Campbell Smith, Shauna Potter, Megan McNellie, Jo Clarke, David Busuttil, Adelaide Church, Bradley Nott, Deb Metters and Franca Barraclough. Shrike O’Malley as Threatened Species Network officer was often contributing at the level of an unofficial committee member and undertook many key administrative and policy tasks for ALEC. In truth there was always a wide network of active members (too many to name here but much appreciated) who contributed to the very wide range of ALECs activities. In Mel’s words “being on the management committee was not glamorous but we drove critical administration tasks for the health of the organisation”.

Mel assisted with three of ALEC’s office moves in her time, from the ALEC shop on Gregory Terrace, to upstairs in the John Cumming Plaza off the Todd Mall (opposite the dumpling shop now), to the Old Hartley St School.  With support from the committee, Mel’s tasks ranged from ensuring there were adequate computers, software and furniture for office staff, to sometimes running the office for a month or two between Coordinators. She was on the recruitment and induction panel for multiple ALEC coordinators including Georgie Stewart (1996-1997), Deb Metters (1998-1999), Glenn Marshall (2000-2003) and John Brisbin (2004-2006).

She recalls that the most time-consuming task was humbugging staff or contractors to finish overdue grants for delivery and acquittal (“my biggest and most boring achievements!” she says).

Mel led many strategic and financial planning days, ensured AGMs were held in accordance with the Constitution, took minutes and assigned tasks at management committee meetings, coordinated annual reports, assisted with annual financial audits and inducted many new committee members and staff to ALEC.

Mel recalls with a grin “Most importantly ALEC was the source of all the best social events in town during this period, they were the secret to the success of ALEC”. Mel loved being a part of them: bike rallies, environment fairs, field trips, film festivals, the annual Quiz and Curry night, and the best dance parties in Central Australia including a Lorax themed party and the Zero Compaction Dance Party with recycled fashion organised by Franka Barraclough. There were many big nights amongst that lot!!

Mel also remembers with satisfaction the campaigns that she participated in. This included preventing the draining of Red Bank Gorge, a Senate Inquiry on wildlife utilization, the Jabiluka anti-uranium mining campaign, holding fuel companies around Alice to account for multiple depot oil leaks, important biodiversity studies across the southern NT, a campaign against the draining of Ilparpa swamp leading to the Alice Springs Urban Water Management Strategy, Ilparpa claypans rehabilitation project, support of critically important Waterwatch and Threatened species programs, Cool Communities greenhouse emissions reduction program, Grey water trials, and sustained campaigning to end fires at the Alice Springs tip and poor waste management.  The latter led to the establishment of Bowerbird Enterprises which successfully tendered for the weighbridge and tip shop contract in 2001.

Mel met Craig James in Alice in 1996 when they were both at CSIRO, grew close through their mutual ALEC commitments, and they married in Hugh Gorge in 2002. They now have two sons Milo and Josh who keep them busy, and she continued to contribute to ALEC until 2007. They moved to NSW near Canberra that year where Mel helped establish and worked for the Palerang Local Action Network for Sustainability (PLANS) in 2012, building a network of people interested in sustainability and supporting local spinoff projects. This led to working with the Molongolo Catchment Group from 2013 -2015 – an umbrella group for a wide network of landcare groups in NSW and ACT. Mel also became a volunteer Cub Scout leader, describing it as ‘a kids environmental club which fosters well rounded personal development’. In 2015 Mel took a job with NSW Government working on climate change adaptation and preparedness where she has been for six years (to 2021).

In reflecting on the influence of ALEC in her life Mel says “it was a pivotal experience I had on the ALEC committee. It went on to underpin so many of the other projects I have been involved in since. Like with so many volunteering experiences, I have received back many times over what I gave – in deep friendships, important skills, ground-truthed experience and most importantly a sense of hope and a belief that normal people can contribute to a better world – we just need to redesign the systems around us to make it an easy choice.  We are traveling towards a more circular, more renewable, less wasteful world and ALEC is a leading light in that story for not just Alice but the whole arid centre of Australia”.

Thanks Mel for all you’ve done for ALEC.

Colleen ‘Shrike’ O’Malley

Life Member 2008

Shrike contributed a vast amount to the protection of threatened species in central Australia during the 1990s and 2000s. ALEC hosted her role as Threatened Species Network coordinator from 1999 to 2006 where she secured strategic funding for key projects, developed highly collaborative projects and formed strong coalitions of government and Aboriginal groups that achieved real outcomes for biodiversity protection. On top of that, Shrike was a shining light for ALEC as a grass-roots activist, maintaining an unwavering standard of integrity, honesty, positivity and passion for ALEC, its members and actions.

We let Shrike take up her story:

“My passion for the environment grew out of childhood outings in New Zealand with the Hawkes Bay Forest and Bird Group and bush trips where Dad fly fished (always unsuccessfully) and us kids got to free range for most of the day.

My first job when I migrated over the Tasman in 1982 was as a field botanist surveying patches of state-owned native vegetation in southeast SA, getting to work in some hidden gems of wetlands and discover weird and wonderful wildlife. I cut my campaigning teeth with FANG (Feminist Anti-Nuclear Group) in Adelaide learning the subtle art of poster pasting and non-violent resistance while supporting the Pine Gap protest camp, and my volunteer work with the Nature Conservation Society of SA focussed on preventing the Chowilla anabranch system becoming a misguided saline interception scheme for the beleaguered Murray. This was while learning to hold my own as the lone woman and conservation voice throughout a volatile two-year community planning process as part of the Chowilla Reference Group. Our work resulted in Chowilla Station and its anabranch system being protected as the state’s first Regional Reserve. I also got to participate in some awesome bioregional surveys in arid bits of SA – the Gawler Rangers, Yellabinna, and Coongie Lakes – this built my love of desert systems and lead me eventually to Alice Springs to work for WWF as the Threatened Species Network (TSN) coordinator for 7 ½ brilliant years hosted out of ALEC.

Those early days were a heady mix of finding my feet in a completely new cultural environment, creating a niche within the vibrant ALEC community and being given plenty of scope by WWF to entirely reshape the TSN role.  Initial projects included big-headed ant surveys around the town, sheda grass eradication out near the claypans, and co-hosting community nightstalk events. Representing biodiversity conservation interests on the State Assessment Panel for Natural Heritage Trust funding was an eye opener into bureaucratic processes and community decision making – over the years of my involvement the group morphed into the NT Landcare Council and oversaw the development of the first Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan for the NT. I chaired several national Recovery Teams for arid zone threatened species and for Gouldian Finch and focused on getting Aboriginal involvement in threatened species planning and project implementation.

The advent of a biannual TSN community grants program gave scope to build on-ground projects and lead to some great collaborations with various Aboriginal groups and with ecologists like Rachel Paltridge, Joe Benshemesh, Ro McFarlane, Steve McAlpin and Ada Nano who worked closely with various communities in the Tanami, Gibson and Great Sandy Desert on projects focussed on culturally significant threatened animals such as mulgara, marsupial moles, bilbies and great desert skinks. I was lucky enough to get out in the field on some of these projects and to work alongside some extraordinary traditional owners, getting a sense of the depth of their knowledge and connection with country.

The Centralian Land Management Association (CLMA) also took on a couple of TSN grant projects, which meant I got to accompany the awesome ALEC stalwart Will Dobbie looking for signs of black-footed rock wallaby populations on pastoral stations and getting to scramble around some great bits of rocky country on the edge of the Simpson and elsewhere. I also had the dubious honour of being the only vegetarian presenter at CLMA’s Clean Green Beef Symposium!

Some of the highlights of my time with TSN included coordinating national recovery team meetings focussed on bringing in strong Aboriginal voices alongside scientists (at Dryandra Woodlands and the year before at Warburton Community – where one of the senior Nyaanyatjarra men delighted SA government scientists in sharing his recipe for honey basted tjakura!), collaborating with CSIRO and PWCNT on buffel grass biodiversity impact research, writing the National Recovery Plan for Gouldian Finch, and building project work with Martu from Parnngurr and Punmu communities which helped seed their very successful ranger program several years later.

Extracurricular ALEC stuff I got to help out with over the years included the campaign to get Ilparpa claypans protected as a reserve (still unfinished business sadly), being part of the Jabiluka blockade, helping organise ALEC’s 21^st bday celebrations, being Membership Officer for a while, helping on Buffel Busting events and climate rallies, being part of various Repair Cafes, playing with compost in the community garden and much more.

It is so exciting to have watched ALEC morph from a grassroots single-staffed organisation which tended to be adversarial in its approach to regional issues when I started back in the late 1990s, to the energetic, professional, collaborative and strategic focus on arid lands sustainability that Glenn Marshall brought to the organisation in the early 2000s, and on to the environmental powerhouse and depth of reach Jimmy Cocking and his team have built up over the last decade! What a fitting baton change to Jade whom I know will build broader connections, grow the membership base, and strengthen the impact and outputs of this much-loved organisation. Hats off to all the long-term members, supporters, champions, activists and staff who have helped get ALEC to where it is now!

Nowadays I’m working as an ecologist for the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust to increase private land conservation areas within the Murray Riverina region – one of the most extensively cleared areas in the state. I moved to Culcairn, a small rural town northeast of Albury almost a year ago and have been busy planting a food forest and pollinator haven on my ½ acre block and look forward to getting stuck into some post COVID Landcare and climate activism activity in the coming years”.

Thanks so much Shrike for your tireless contributions to ALEC.

Robbie Henderson

Life Member 2012

Robbie has made a vast contribution to ALEC and the environment movement in central Australia and the South Pacific. He is a youth educator, climate change activist, water conservation expert, community empowerer and tropical forest protector. Since becoming an ALEC member in 1997, he has been a staff member, mentor, convenor, management committee member and keeper of ALEC knowledge.

Robbie moved to Alice Springs in 1996 as the Invertebrates Keeper at the Alice Springs Desert Park, a position he held until 2000. Small creatures remain a passion. He joined ALEC’s staff in 2000 as the Regional Coordinator of Waterwatch NT, working extensively with school students in central Australia until 2002. During this time he was a national finalist for the Young Australian of the Year (Environment).

In 2002, Robbie married local girl Emily Findlay at Simpsons Gap, herself a great contributor to environmental education in central Oz. They have 2 boys Fynn & Archer. Robbie has contributed significantly to every major water conservation initiative in Alice Springs since 2000. To name a few, he wrote the Waterwise NT School Guide in 2003, led a highly successful community engagement process for the Alice Springs Water Resource Strategy in 2005, and co-developed the Alice Water Smart Residential and Commercial program in 2009 (with his good friend Glenn Marshall) which in 2011 became the largest program ever delivered by ALEC.

Outside of ALEC, Robbie remains an active contributor to the Alice Springs Junior Rangers program, and a long term member of the Alice Springs Field Naturalists Club. Robbie has consistently been an ALEC management committee member since 2002, including his role as Convenor in 2003-2004. Robbie is highly valued for his strategic input, and has been a key player in ALEC’s large growth phase since 2009, assisting the passionate drive of Coordinator Jimmy Cocking.

In 2008, Robbie revitalised ALEC’s desertSMART COOLmob program as its Coordinator, involving 700-member households. He jointly set up the Sustainable Living House with Alice Solar City in 2008 – 2009, with over 1,300 people visiting.

In 2004 and 2006-07, Robbie & Emily moved to Fiji then Vanuatu with the international NGO “Live & Learn”, as environmental education specialists. They returned to Alice Springs in 2008, and Robbie continued to lead the Live & Learn Climate Change program throughout the South Pacific, based out of ALEC’s office. He assists local communities to protect their forests by trading and protecting their carbon reserves. This is a world-leading initiative driven by Robbie’s tireless and strategic work.

Robbie remained a great mentor for all in ALEC, freely sharing his insights, strategic mind, historical knowledge and experience within the organisation. He and Emily and their 2 boys moved to northern NSW in 2018 where they continue their significant inputs to environmental activities.

Robbie – thank you from all at ALEC.