Join us for Bayside Talks: Powering Community Resilience, an evening dedicated to practical solutions for building a fairer, cleaner energy future while strengthening our community’s resilience to extreme weather events. As storms, floods, heatwaves, and rising energy costs impact our daily lives, now is the time to adapt and prepare.

Hear from expert guest speakers: Jerry Coleby-Williams, internationally renowned horticulturist and sustainability pioneer; Trevor Berrill, award-winning sustainable energy consultant; and Clare Silcock, Energy Strategist at QCC. They’ll share actionable insights on making your home more energy-efficient, climate-resilient, and better prepared for the future.

Following the talks, join a Q&A and small group discussions on real-world challenges like rising electricity costs, accessing solar and battery storage, and strengthening our community against climate impacts. Plus, discover how you can take action to bring these solutions to the Bayside. Let’s come together to create lasting change!

This event is coordinated by Queensland Conservation Council and co-hosted by Queensland Community Alliance, Angligreen, Parents for Climate, and Australian Conservation Foundation.

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About the speakers:

Jerry Coleby Williams

Internationally Renowned Horticulturist, Pioneer of Sustainability and Organic Best Practice.

Initially trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK) and the Royal Horticultural Society (UK), Jerry is qualified in horticultural estate management, soft landscape design, arboriculture, conservation, horticultural and botanical sciences.

Jerry has managed plant production nurseries, urban forests, heritage parks, one of London’s busiest garden centres, and he helped establish Mt Annan Native Botanic Garden (NSW). For twelve years, Jerry managed the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. His design of the Rare & Threatened Plants Garden (1998) launched a career in radio, television, magazine writing and public speaking. Jerry is a familiar voice and face to most gardeners having appeared on ABC Radio Talkback Gardening since 1995 and ABC Television’s ‘Gardening Australia’ programme since 1999.

A pioneer of sustainability and organic best practice, in 2003, Jerry created ‘Bellis’, a unique, affordable, sustainable house and garden in subtropical Brisbane by retrofitting a century old Queenslander house. Bellis exports three times more solar electricity than it consumes and the garden sequesters more carbon dioxide than the occupants generate, recycles all waste water for food growing in a water sensitive landscape that both mitigates localised flooding and grows a surplus of food even during ongoing drought. There is zero food waste.

Growing 500 kinds of plant, the food garden feeds the household, while the ornamental front garden features plants that are dealing well with our emerging new climate.

The seed bank combines with the nursery to provide a community gene bank, supplying community nurseries, farmers and collectors with a range of seed and plants not found in the trade.

Over 580 species of animal, including twenty six species of bee, and about three new species, as yet undescribed by science, live at or visit Bellis.

Retrofitting Bellis cost less than buying an average family four wheel drive car and its ongoing benefits include reduced household bills, healthy food, a leafy garden, and peace of mind in an increasingly uncertain world. These heartening results lead to Jerry being invited to speak about sustainable food production at the United Nations, in Geneva (2017). 

Jerry’s website and social media page are followed in 133 countries, he answers 15,000 questions a year, and his website has been archived by the Australian National Library: www.jerry-coleby-williams.net.

Trevor Berrill

Trevor Berrill is an award winning, private consultant in sustainable energy (SE).  He has worked in both renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) for over 45 years, including: 

• Solar and wind system design and installation – on and off-grid, 

• Design of energy efficient homes and units,

• Research and development at UQ, QUT and GU, 

• National RE technical training development and implementation, 

• Public education and policy with Renew and the Smart Energy Council 

He was past branch president of the Solar Energy Society and a founding member of the RENEW and the Australasian Wind Energy Association. 

Trevor is trained in mechanical engineering and energy auditing at QUT and has a Masters of Environmental Education degree from Griffith University. 

He lives in a fully solar powered, energy efficient home, windsurfs regularly, just to test the power of the wind, and drives a solar powered electric car and bike. 

Clare Silcock

Clare is the Queensland Conservation Council's Energy Strategist, working to expose the unprofitability and climate risks of Queensland's coal power stations and build the case for closing them by 2030. She is a renewable energy engineer, with ten years experience in electricity market modelling, zero carbon transition planning and community energy development in London and Brisbane.