Aunty Deidre Martin is a Walbanga woman of the Yuin Nation. Her connection to country is through her father, who was born in Nowra on the South Coast of N.S.W and she is well respected by the Wreck Bay, Nowra and Jerrinja communities around these parts. She has worked as an Aboriginal Discovery Ranger teaching about Culture to schools with the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service for 20yrs and works beyond this as a Cultural Guide.
In 2022 she co-created a project with well known visual artist, Dr Erica Seccombe, as a Tallus Art Project, titled Walk beside me. This focused on creating a beautiful visual representation of the plants to be found near Bundanon as Aunty walked people through the grounds and shared her vast knowledge. You can watch this here

Take a walk on the boardwalk with Aunty Deidre Martin amongst the mangroves.
Many of us walk around in a state of deprivation, despite being in the midst of plenty. In the busy-ness of life, we are similar to little ants - scurrying everywhere frantically, but missing the bigger picture. When we take a step back and widen our view, we suddenly see all of the opportunities available to us.
Aunty Deidre will share more about the concept of ‘plant blindness’, which refers to those that have more recently come to this continent’s inability to notice the plants in our surrounding environment. This lack of reverence for and sliding relationship with nature has seen us devolve in our reference to nature as ‘it’ rather than ‘thou’. Our society fails to acknowledge the vital role that plants have in our communal biosphere and the beauty they bring to our cultural and spiritual lives.
You will leave feeling inspired by First Nations knowledge systems and their significance, as Aunty Deidre encourages all of us to pause, listen and truly look.



