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Feature
Interview
trudy staines
entomology & education
Interview by Craig Jollow
You are Narrabri through and
through …. so what are your
early school-day memories?
Well , actually I was born in
Tamworth and spent the first 8
years of my life on a property
in Nundle, where I first started
school. Then just weeks before my
little brother Cameron was born,
we moved to Narrabri where my
mother decided that it would be a
good idea to put a bit of religion
into our lives and enrolled myself
and my other brother Guy into St
Francis Xavier’s Catholic School.
My strongest memories are that
of respect whenever a person
entered or exited our classroom.
We would all have to stand and
say “good morning Mr Jollow and
may God bless you” - and the
other was of discipline. There were
still nuns at the school when I
went and they could be mean and
you still received the cane (not
‘God-like’ I thought).They also
introduced weeding the grounds.
My mother always said the school
grounds didn’t look as good when
the Staines children left. However
it was a good school and it was to
set me up for high school.
I’ve been told that, as a child,
you spent a lot of time with
friends at the local creek explor-
ing the environment.
It would be interesting to find out
who the dobber is? Yes I did! I
wasn’t much for being in-doors
and if you hung around the house
you would always get lots of jobs
to do so it was much more fun
to hide down Bullawa Creek (not
that it ever had much water in it
though), and build cubby houses,
play armies with the neighbours
and just explore. When I was little
we didn’t have a TV that worked
- well it only worked when the
news was on or ‘Little House on
the Prairie’ (very old TV show
that one), so we would be either
out on our horses or push bikes
or down the creek. The only way
mum could get us back was to
beep the car horn and we would
come running thinking we were
missing a drive to town. You never
wanted to miss a trip to civilisa-
tion!
Perhaps this initiated your later
interest in entomology (study of
insects).
Not sure where my love of ento-
mology came from. Maybe having
brothers that like to try and scare
you with gross creepy crawlies or
just living in a house with no fly
screens so you learn to appreciate
the difference between pests and
beneficial crawlies like the spiders
eating mozzies and flies so you
can sleep at night!
I understand you always wanted
to be a ranger… how did this
morph into your present oc-
cupation?
They asked me at high school
what I wanted to do and I said
helping to connect the agricultural and educational
communities of Narrabri, trudy staines works as an CSIRO
entomologist and education officer with the Cotton crc
I wanted to work with plants
and animals. Careful what you
wish for! I got cotton plants and
insects. I did one week of work
experience in year 10 in child care
and was not really impressed with
that and the other with the Na-
tional Parks and Wildlife and loved
it. I also did the seasonal ranger
job over the holidays. Working
with people in the environment
was awesome. I went to Armidale
TAFE on completion of my HSC
as I had no idea of what I wanted
to do or where I wanted to go.
I think mum just wanted me to
achieve as I was the first of my
family to have gone on and got
my HSC so I did an Associate Di-
ploma of Applied Science Biologi-
cal Techniques. This was great. It
had a good mix of field and labo-
ratory work and gave me the love
of science I have. I was then going
to go on and do my Degree in
Science; however that got put on
hold as my father fell really ill and
mum needed me home. So as
one door may close, others open.
This is where I gained some casual
work at the Cotton Research Sta-
tion for a month and then got an
offer to do 12 months work at the
University of Sydney Plant Breed-
08 | iNarrabri Magazine
photo: john burgess
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