By Tania Phillips
Gardening Australia presenter and suburban sustainability pioneer Jerry Coleby Williams is keynote speaker at the Stanthorpe Eco Expo to be held from 9am to 4pm on 3 October at the Stanthorpe Railway Station.
The ABC program’s Queensland-based presenter will be one of four speakers at the event covering
Coleby-Williams is passionate and well-known for his work in sustainability retro-fitting his own house in the Brisbane suburb of Wynnum to be an example of sustainable living in the suburbs.
While his presence may have people believing the event was just about gardens, even co-ordinator Sarah Hamilyn-Harris said it was more than that.
“It is a sustainability organic type of event – some people think it’s a garden expo but it isn’t really,” Sarah said.
She said it had been inspired by similar events held by the Border Landcare Organic group which wrapped up at the end of last year after 16 years operation.
“It use to run 10 field days a year on all different aspects – food production, health, waste reduction, recycling, renewable energy – all of those topics,” she said.
“The Eco Expo sort of grew out of that – it’s not the same committee or anything but instead of having 10 field days event it is one event to incorporate a lot of different topics around sustainability. Bringing it all into one event.”
The event will be broken up into two sections – a speaker program with four guest speakers for people to listen to as well as displays put together by a lot of local groups.
“We will have an outdoor stage and seating and we will have four speakers coming,” she said.
“The key-note speaker is Jerry Coleby-Williams – he is so well informed. The other speakers- one is going to talk mainly on renewable energy, another will talk about climate change action and the third will look at the future of farming.
“Concurrently with the speaker program which is pretty much running 9.30am to 3pm we will have a whole heap of exhibits or stalls. People will be showing various sustainable activities.”
There will be everything from an organic compost store to the Southern Down Regional Council.
This will be a Covid 19 compliant event and entry will be through a cold coin donation and for more information head to www.stanthorpeecoexpo.com.au.
