When Lauren Dillon was four years old, living with her family in the small picturesque township of Russell’s Bridge near Geelong, she recalls her father coming home with an injured orphan Magpie they named Maggie. Maggie had fallen out of her nest after strong Spring winds had literally shaken her out of a tree.
“In that situation, it’s do-or-die, because the birds can’t get back up into the trees – they don’t have that ability. They’re abandoned. At that moment, I recognised just how fragile nature is. But also that if you put in effort, you can take care of it,” says Lauren.
After some months of care, Maggie became strong enough to fly off again on her own. And then she returned with her own baby magpies some time later. “It just hit me then that if you put in effort to protect nature, your efforts will be rewarded tenfold.”
Her early experiences with Maggie the magpie became something of a precursor for Lauren’s passion for the environment. She had also spent a lot of time as a child with her mum caring for orphaned lambs. “Raising animals was important in connecting me with what I wanted to do,” she says.
When she was in year 10, her family moved to Geelong. Lauren began researching more about climate change and the solutions to environmental problems and realised we have the solutions, and it just comes down to political willpower and community effort to implement them. “I was a pretty stubborn kid, and I guess I still am if you ask my mum.”
It was around this time that a proposal came along for a new local floating gas terminal on Geelong’s Bay. She knew she had to get involved in stopping it in its tracks. “By that point, I had been struggling with climate anxiety and not knowing where to put my effort. And I knew straight away that doing this work placed me in my community and that it was something I really enjoyed doing.”
It became a campaign that consumed a lot of Lauren’s time over the following years, but she is still fighting. Last October, Lauren organised her first event in Geelong called Australia’s Gas Problem – Lessons from Gladstone. This was a community forum that flew people from Gladstone in Queensland to share their experiences of a similar gas terminal in their community.
“It was wild for me to be leading such an event. And afterwards, I had so many people coming up to me and wanting to get involved in our Geelong Renewables Not Gas working group. That was just mind- boggling to me, because many of these people hadn’t been involved in something like this before, but they put enough faith in me to get involved. I feel very thankful for that.”
Lauren’s life now sees her moving between her home in Geelong and her work and studies in Melbourne – but she actively seeks out nature wherever she is. “I live right by Corio Bay, so I walk along the bay to see ducks in the water, and jellyfish, that’s really special to me.”
“But even in the city, my eyes are always flitting around, looking to see where nature is. Even in industrial areas in Melbourne, you can still see birds flying over, or snails on the sidewalks, or a fern that is pushing up through the pavement.”
Despite all the environmental and human rights challenges facing her generation, Lauren says she still feels hopeful about the future. “I think that you have to be hopeful in times like this, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. When I meet someone, and I see the start of the spark of interest and of passion for the environment, that is so exciting for me.”
“Whilst [we] might not get it right every time, it doesn’t mean that we can’t get it right in the future. Everything that I do is something that I picked up from someone who has done it for years before me. I think you just have to realise that it’s a generational change and often the change comes in mindsets and hearts rather than hard statistics and facts.”
The campaigning she has already done has taught her that change can come slowly, but that every action we take has an impact. “I think that something that you’ve got to remember is that even if you can’t tangibly see the change we need, it doesn’t mean that you [aren’t] having an impact.”
“What I come back to is that we’ve got ourselves into this mess, but by golly, we’ll get ourselves out of it. It’s inevitable.”
