Andrew Campbell is a name well known to so many in both rural and urban landcare, either through his stirring speeches at conferences, attendance at field days or for those having been on a Board or Committee with him.
Many speak of a lasting memory from a speech they heard Andrew present at a conference. Others find the same lasting memory from his many written papers and books.
What he says resonates with current times for those long term and new members of landcare and a focus of the importance of community to landcare is always articulated.
Andrew’s ability to creatively provide the attendees or readers with firstly the important feeling that they belong to something very special by being in landcare, he then takes everyone on a ride to see the opportunities that are still to be achieved. Once on board the journey, Andrew holds everyone’s interest by being positively provocative in throwing out to the listener or reader an observation of some missed potentials for the environment that should be considered or remedied.
At the end of the journey, he skillfully ensures that all leave happily inspired knowing landcare is exciting, that everyone’s participation is valued and importantly, all leave with a feeling of warm willingness and commitment to do more.
Andrew grew up on a family farm north of Cavendish in western Victoria, on the south-western edge of the Grampians. He is still involved with his family farm in western Victoria and the Mooralla Landcare Group, where his family has been farming since the 1860s.
After studying forestry at Creswick and the University of Melbourne, Andrew worked in farm trees extension at Stawell, Bendigo and Shepparton, before being seconded to the Garden State Committee from 1984-88 to manage the Potter Farmland Plan project– the largest environmental philanthropic investment in Australia to that time.
The Potter Farmland Plan was a high profile, influential initiative, helping to inform the 1988 joint proposal by the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) to then Prime Minister Bob Hawke for a national program of community-driven land restoration, based on whole farm planning and catchment planning (which subsequently became the National Landcare Program). Andrew then worked closely on that proposal with Jane Elix from ACF and Philip Eliason from NFF and was appointed as Australia’s first National Landcare Facilitator in 1989.
From 1989 to 1992, Andrew undertook almost 200 field trips to all parts of Australia, sharing knowledge among emerging landcare groups and nascent landcare programs in all jurisdictions. With Nan Oates, in 1992 he hosted the first national workshop for landcare facilitators and coordinators in Hamilton and on his farm. In 1994, his book Landcare: communities shaping the land and the future, provided the first national portrait of the rapidly growing landcare movement in Australia.
Andrew went on to a series of influential leadership roles in natural resource management at the interface between science and policy, leading the BushCare program for Environment Australia, then as CEO of Land & Water Australia, head of environmental science at Charles Darwin University, and CEO of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). At ACIAR, Andrew co-edited a 2022 book on international landcare: Building Global Sustainability through local self-reliance: lessons from landcare.
Since the death of the Hon Joan Kirner in 2015, Andrew has been Patron of Landcare Victoria Inc.