Reef Extension Graduate Kate Armstrong

During June, myself and five other reef extension graduates embarked on a two week journey up the Queensland coast as part of QFF’s pilot capacity building program. Our journey took us from Brisbane to Mossman, stopping at various locations throughout the Great Barrier Reef Catchments.

As each of us are placed in different reef catchment regions, we rarely get the opportunity to meet and share the interesting work we’ve been doing with our host organisations. It was interesting to step into each other’s worlds, display our projects, reflect on what we’ve learnt and talk about where we see ourselves going in the future.

One valuable part of the trip was being exposed to other natural resource management groups and agronomic service providers, allowing us to learn how they approach extension and take new and refreshing ideas home to our own communities and local industry. It was an incredibly valuable experience to engage with agricultural industries other than the one we work in, as we saw parts of grazing, sugarcane, forestry and horticulture.

Part of this experience was learning about industries we potentially didn’t know much about, for example I personally almost nothing about forestry. Following the trip, I have a new appreciation for the science behind the industry and have learnt it’s much more than just growing and cutting down trees, rather it’s a highly technical and important economic asset that can contribute to agricultural industries and is important for conservation.

On a practical level, the trip was an opportunity to build our networks as we were able to engage with a wide variety of industry stakeholders, researchers, professionals and organisations. Being responsible for organising activities in our reef catchment region was a great way to learn organisation and facilitation skills, as well as communication skills as we each prepared a presentation for the group in our area.

Overall, the exposure this trip gave us to the sector really made us appreciate just how diverse agriculture is within our state and how passionate people in the industries are. It also built on an appreciation for our natural areas and diverse environment, helping solidify the value we should have for our natural areas, particularly the Great Barrier Reef. The trip has been a highlight of the program and I’m excited to be part of the next generation of extension!