The son of a dairy farmer from McKees Hill, Jim Richardson
started his education at a one-teacher school at Clovass. Since those early
years, he has been fortunate enough to take advantage of the educational opportunities
that came his way. They eventually led him out of rural New South Wales, to the
city, and the wide world.
Fast forward to the 1970s, and Jim was a scholarship student
at university in Armidale. Originally aiming to become a marine biologist, Jim
realised he wanted to be involved with education, so decided to become a
science teacher instead.
During university, Jim had been to the Nimbin Aquarius
Festival in 1973, and it made an impression on him that would shape both his
professional career and his environmental outlook.
“I was right into this
concept of needing to educate yourself and to free up education, do whatever
courses you can as long as they don’t cost too much money”, says Jim.
Contracted to take up a teaching post after graduating, Jim ended
up in Bathurst, where he taught for 3 years before having saved enough money to
embark on a year-long backpacking adventure. The plan was to go overland from
Singapore all the way to Europe, but he got stopped at the border to
Afghanistan. “It was 1978, the border was opening, it was closing, it was so
hot, 40 degrees in the night time”, Jim recalls. “So we just flew to Greece!”
Back from his travels, Jim jumped at the chance to take a
short course in teacher librarianship in Sydney. This fully funded course added
another string to his bow and from then he went on to work as a teacher
librarian in schools in Sydney and later Casino.
“Most North Coast people want
to come back to the North Coast ‘cause we know how good it is”, says Jim of his
appointment to Casino High School. It meant he could be closer to his family and
also start to fulfil some of his environmental goals. “Since the Aquarius
Festival I’d had the idea that it would be really good to get some land and
grow some food.” Jim and his partner, Vicki Ross, and their young son, Sam, had
a property at Jiggi where they grew coffee and had begun some reforestation.
When Jim got a transfer to Byron Bay High School, the family
needed to move east. “Eventually we found this paddock here and thought ‘this
is ok’, and we didn’t realise just how ok it was”, says Jim of their 2.4
hectare property in Clunes. Over time it has been regenerated with flourishing
vegetable gardens, fruit trees, bamboo pockets and a cabinet timber plantation
which Jim hopes to keep intact as carbon storage.
Jim's work on the property reflects
his love for environmental diversity, and draws on botany and plant ecology
knowledge he gained while at university. “I could go all hippy and say, ‘heal
the land’, he laughs. “I don’t ever use those terms, I always see it more as
restoring a little bit back to the way it was.”
Since retiring from teaching in 2012, Jim has been using his
library and computing knowledge in volunteer work among the Burmese refugee
community in northern Thailand.
“As I got towards retirement age I started
taking some long service leave and I thought ‘it’s time to put some stuff back
in instead of just going and consuming the culture’”, he says. Jim had
travelled through South East Asia and was interested in the politics and the diverse
ethnic groups in the area. Working with the Burma Study Centre, a non-profit organisation
in Chiang Mai, Jim has helped create online library services and provide
education and training to migrants.
Jim is passionate about community engagement, including
being active on council-based initiatives and community planning panels. Councils
like to formalise community activism through panels and committees encouraging people
to do things for each other, but Jim says that in reality, residents in small
communities are already highly engaged.
“They don’t need council
encouragement”, he says. “What we want is council to help us do it, to fund it.
Somewhere in between there is a meeting point, if we can get a bit of both happening,
that’s good.”
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