 We're in Marnesbury Common and its history goes back right to pastoralism, even going back before that the Gadug and Gujji are the original clan group that used to be here. It's been used by the community for a really long period of time but it's also got multiple land tenure around it. There's a grassland rendered on the top which is pretty clapped out but it's in the state of recovery and burning is one of those tools we're applying to try and bring it back to health and then there's the township itself which sits off to the east and to the southeast and it's come through a pretty dramatic transformation in the last sort of 10 to 15 years since land care got involved. Prior to that and up until last year there was choked out with woody weeds or willows, blackberries and gorse all through here. My name is Martin Roberts I'm the Bushland Reserves Officer for Macedon Rangers Shire Council. There's a lot of different knowledges and the values really radiate from that regarding the history, the more recent history, the long deep history and I suppose the incredibly recent history with regards to the transformation of the space but everybody has those ecological values and the fire and the knowledge that goes with that there's fire knowledge and yeah and there's just recreation knowledge like where's the best fishing spots and how do you get to run them that kind of thing some of it is is easy to engage with other times it's not so easy to engage with it's really important to listen to your audience and your stakeholders members of the public some of them have incredible knowledge in their working background or just in their private life we have to accept that their values might not agree with ours and it's okay to not agree but we need to acknowledge that and we need to take those values on board and incorporate them in our plans. Many of the community members and stakeholders and interest groups that we engage with have a lot of knowledge and we find it very helpful when we can tap into that knowledge and help it in our planning and delivery processes. I sometimes see my role as a engagement practitioner as a bit like being a detective in supporting our staff to engage with people we need to first identify who those people are and so I spend a lot of time in investigating the areas where we carry out fire management activities including fire ecological works looking at who are the who are the people within the community who are the organisations and who in the different agencies and councils would be interested or need to know what we're doing. Sometimes you have these amazing discussions where you try to bring them on to an understanding of what you're about and how you're trying to manage the reserve whilst taking on board what they're trying to say to you and understand what they're trying to say to you and value and show empathy towards their point of view which may be almost sometimes in direct conflict with with where you're trying to go with your your management of the reserve so whether one of the most interesting ones is usually around the use of fire and fuel management and fire management in a reserve like this. I think it's important when we're doing that that we don't make any assumptions about everybody involved if we open if we approach this with an open book and we approach everybody equally on the principle that everybody has something to offer then I think that we're on the the best first step to an engagement process. I believe that everyone's knowledge is valid it all creates a tapestry of understanding whether it be cultural knowledge or just sort of things that people don't think to tell you so only through conversations do you build that up and that happens over time but when there's a focus like plan burning that's when it's the door or the conduit to a bigger conversation because that's the point of interest that somebody has that creates the opportunity to talk about other things. We need to understand that engaging isn't presenting it's not teaching you know it's a collective effort it's a collective process and I think one of the cornerstone one of the foundation components of that is to be open to everybody's experiences and ideas and their skills and also their personalities because we've got and we might have an untapped amount of knowledge and capability within community but quite often that might not readily come out so we need to engage with with those people and and access that. You've got to really look at your objective and what you're trying to achieve and if your objective is perhaps to protect critical infrastructure or a place where people are residing and it's really important it there may be some trade-offs but in the end needs to be objectively driven as well. You can't always please everyone you can't always come up with solution but it doesn't mean that you should ignore those people with other passionate views that are different to yours. Whilst we all have this knowledge we all have limited knowledge so the opportunity to take and learn how a space or a place might respond to different types of ignition how to plants recover how to animals recover how to weeds respond what are the opportunities that come with that and that's definitely something I think is of value.