Celebrating 30 years of bushland caring
This International Volunteer Day, we turn the spotlight on one of BGPA’s longest-standing volunteers.
Joanne Dumaresq has been volunteering with the Friends of Kings Park’s Bushland Carers for a whopping 30 years – right alongside her husband.
The Bushland Carers were the first volunteer group set up by the Friends of Kings Park, established in 1994. On its establishment, the Friends advertised the group in The Post newspaper and Joanne, with her background in forestry and botany, reached out, seeing that the Bushland Carers would be a great outlet for her passions.
Fortunately, Joanne’s husband Ian is likeminded, so the couple joined the group together – and have now been volunteering together with the Bushland Carers for 30 years.
Joanne fell pregnant shortly before joining the group, growing the family volunteering collective.
“My sons would just come in the pusher and half the time they’d probably be sleeping because you walk in the park and they go to sleep anyway.
“Initially the time commitment was less, with the group meeting only once every three months, so it was quite manageable with children.”
As soon as Joanne and Ian’s sons were out of the pusher, they were wandering around “helping” with tasks like weeding.
“I don’t know how much help it actually was though!”
Their eldest son Sam has been coming back ever since. Now in his late 20s, Sam continues to volunteer with the Bushland Carers once a fortnight – and has even brought his girlfriend Jess into the fold too!
The Friends of Kings Park Bushland Carers undertake a variety of roles, including planting, clean up sessions, herbaceous weeding, arbor work and seed collecting, depending on the season and on BGPA’s requirements.
As well as the variety of tasks, when asked what she enjoys about working with the Bushland Carers, Joanne is quick to respond that she enjoys the social aspect. To ensure the group are doing more than just working, Joanne and Ian even put on morning tea for the group every fortnight.
Joanne also values being able to see her work visibly improve the park, especially when it comes to clearing the way for orchids, her favourite genera of WA native plant.
“If you go through an area that’s full of Veldt grass and you manage to clean it all out, it’s actually really nice, and people can actually see the plants that are there.
“There’s a few areas where we have cleaned the Veldt grass out and all of a sudden there’s orchids everywhere.”
Alongside the Bushland Carers, Joanne currently volunteers doing gardening at the East Perth Cemetery and works in the Friends of Kings Park office a few hours each week updating the membership database. However these are just her current roles, with Joanne having volunteered in a huge range of positions over her lifetime.
From recording audiobooks for the visually impaired, running the WA Softball state umpires association, cataloguing at the State Herbarium and helping to organise events for the WA Museum Friends group, Joanne’s volunteering CV is rich and varied. Her first volunteering experience was as a teenager, helping her mother at a primary school library. Coming full circle, Joanne now works at a primary school library herself in a part-time role – a job she got through volunteering there!
While Joanne acknowledges that volunteering isn’t always a direct pathway to a paid career, she strongly believes that volunteering comes with a huge range of benefits.
“You’re not thinking of the benefit at the time, but these things just lead on.”
“I just feel that there are no downsides to volunteering, basically.”
Joanne encourages those interested in volunteering to pursue an area aligned with their passions – and if that doesn’t work, move sideways.
“Don’t feel that you’ve failed, or that there’s something wrong if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing because everyone likes different things, and it’s just a matter of trying to work through what you’re really interested in. Keep trying, the world needs volunteers!”
BGPA would like to thank all the volunteers who make Kings Park and Bold Park great places to be, and congratulate Joanne (and her family!) on their the 30 year milestone.
