From country to coast

Andrew Mathieson
BURIED among the sticks – somewhere between Mt Duneed and Bellbrae – environmentalist Graeme Stockton talks the talk and walks the walk.
His home is a shrine to a cause, an ethos, a way of life dear to his heart.
Graeme has lived on an isolated property for six years, doing his bit to readdress the balance.
And he’ll preach to anyone prepared to listen about how to live harmoniously with nature.
“People don’t extrapolate,” he explains.
“They think in terms of the plants they are digging but not in terms of their habitat.
“As we enter the industrial age and the 21st Century, we’ve actually become totally insulated from the surrounding environment.”
Local flora fills Graeme’s utopian paradise, native bird boxes adorn the high trees and marsupials have the run of the land.
Graeme lives and breathes the outdoors.
The 45-year-old is a pioneer in restoring indigenous vegetation through his own nursery business.
He combines his love of the land with a passion for the coast.
Graeme is a founding activist for Surfers Appreciating the Natural Environment (SANE) group and Spirit of Surfing Trust, which operates under a mantra of respect for the ocean, the Earth and each other.
Graeme and his family moved from Halls Gap to Geelong when he was four but always returned to the idyllic surrounds of their former home in the mountains for holidays.
Enrolling at Burnley Horticulture College in his early 20s introduced another heavy influence on his life.
“My folks had always been very supportive and encouraging of looking after nature,” Graeme says.
“You know, never throw your litter out and all that kind of thing.”
Graeme mowed lawns for a number of years soon after college before finally having a crack at his own business.
“I thought if nothing had come of it after a year, I’d would move on,” he says.
West Coast Indigenous Nursery is now blooming.
It came out of a need to replace local flora in the Bellarine Peninsula and Surf Coast regions.
The business began thriving after coastal residents started to embrace his landscaping ideas.
“In many ways, my business is my passion but I really do it because I want to provide more habitat for local birds and animals,” Graeme tells.
“I get to sell my plants in doing that and it just happens that people see that as a good thing.”
After working 18 years in the field, Graeme better understands the region’s environmental concerns than most.
He joined SANE after gravitating towards the coast at 14 when learning how to surf.
Years later he responded to a sign in a Jan Juc shop window for people willing to look after the beaches.
“Before then I used to really just throw my hands up and be quite sad that our entire coastline was just getting degraded,” Graeme says.
“I felt as an individual there was just no avenue for me to doing anything about that.”
It gave him the opportunity of growing more plants and he was quickly identified as the expert in the group.
Graeme loves his job and his volunteer work and would never trade in the good life.
“The other day when I was out working on the cliffs up at Southside I saw a female humpback whale and calf go by – you can’t pay for those views,” he smiles.