Michael S Humphreys memorial gifts for bushcare

Dear friends, family, and colleagues of Professor Michael Stephenson Humphreys,

 

Michael passed on April 13, 2021.

 

If you wanted to honour him in any way, we would like to suggest the Moggill Creek Catchment Group  (MCCG). Michael put his heart, mind and soul, as well as sweat and on occasion, blood, into the MCCG from 1999 onwards. You could either volunteer some time (even just an hour or two at a working bee) with the group, or consider a monetary donation. 

 

You can read about a recent tree planting ceremony held in his honour here . 

 

During his 42 years in Australia he became a passionate and highly knowledgeable native bushcare advocate and worker. As well as planting his own entire native rainforest on his own acreage property, converting former horse paddocks into mature rainforests, he became deeply involved in the MCCG bushcare group, and was the Gap Creek section leader for many years.   

 

You  can visit  this treasure of a park yourself at the end of Kookaburra Street  in Kenmore Hills, or from the corner of Deerhurst and Brookfield Roads  in Brookfield. He played a huge role in transforming this area from a completely weed species-filled road reserve, into an extraordinary native rainforest park.

 

In most of his emeritus years, he would still go in to his office at The University of Queensland early enough in the morning to park in the very first parking spot in the designated complex.  After he had done his academic work for the day, he would come home at about noon, recuperate, and then go work in the Gap Creek Park section. He also spent every single weekend working there. He bloody mindedly murdered countless invasive non-native plant species, and lovingly planted literally thousands of new native trees between 1999 and 2020. And he organised thousands more plantings.

 

Michael believed in the power of local action (and lived it). The Moggill Creek Catchment Group (completely volunteer) is doing very direct work, and is very much in need of funding to continue their incredible work.

 

Funds are used, for example, to purchase seedlings of native species or the tools volunteers use to plant natives or to rid the rainforests of invasive non-native species, or for trail maintenance.  You can take a look at some of the organisation’s ongoing projects here .

 

This GoFundMe is being organised by Michael’s daughters, Karin and Andrea Humphreys, and his wife Anita Steinerts in collaboration with the MCCG (Treasurer:  Alan Walmsley). You  can contact the MCCG here.  

 

We will miss Mike terribly, but he leaves behind a remarkable legacy.