Neil Black (BScAgr, Dip Ed (Tech), Hort Cert (Hons), PSM)

I consider myself very fortunate to have been raised on a sheep-wheat farm in western New South Wales. Not only did my upbringing enable me to develop a strong work ethic and a whole range of skills that would stand me in good stead for the remainder of my life, but it instilled in me a love of agriculture.

After completing the first three years of schooling by correspondence, my parents - along with two of our farmer neighbours - built a small school on one of the properties and employed a teacher to teach the then total of six children. I rode a horse or bike the 8 km to and from school and relished doing my chores on the farm before and after school. There was no doubt in my mind at this time that even if I didn’t have the opportunity to pursue a career as a farmer, I would definitely be doing something associated with agriculture.

For high school, I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend boarding school in Orange – 330 km from the farm. Wolaroi College was a single sex boy’s school with approximately 320 students of which 85% were boarders. Sport was an important part of our lives and I was fortunate to be sufficiently competent to do well at a number of sports. I also did well academically and enjoyed many of the extracurricular activities such as debating and drama. The other thing that I greatly enjoyed after the first three or so years at boarding school was taking up leadership opportunities. I was appointed a prefect in 4th year and then school captain in 5th year. I was also house captain and captain of the 1st rugby team and the 1st cricket team. These opportunities just seemed to occur naturally which made me determined to ‘keep my feet on the ground’ and not let ego get the better of me.

I mention the above because the relatively ‘closed’ and protective environment that I had enjoyed at boarding school proved to be a major disadvantage for me when I hit the ‘big smoke’ at the age of 17 to study Agricultural Science at Sydney University.

My passion for agriculture had grown during my time at school and I obtained 1st Class Honours and 5th in the State in Agriculture in the Leaving Certificate. This, along with A’s in English, Modern History and General Maths, won me a Commonwealth Scholarship; so, I was ready and rearing to go.

A troubled beginning at University

The problem was that I was very naïve. I was naïve in regards to living in a big city where I hardly knew anyone and I was naïve in relation to the very different approach to learning that university study requires. I also soon discovered that even though I had received a Commonwealth Scholarship which covered my university fees, the asset means test meant I wasn’t eligible for a living away from home allowance because my parents owned a farm. Associated with this was the shock I received when I sought to find accommodation and discovered what I could afford was far below the standard I envisioned I would be living in.

In other words, the vision I had of finding a nice flat close to Sydney University and living a relatively carefree life - in contrast to boarding school - turned out to be far from reality.

These issues, along with the fact that I soon discovered the first year of the degree, that I had so looked forward to undertaking, involved subjects that - to me anyway - had little relevance to agriculture, meant that I had a really miserable time in first year. Not only had I gone from being a big fish in a small pond to a tiny fish in a big bond, but I was a depressed fish! In fact I became so stressed about the whole scenario I nearly quit. I had mates who had gone to Ag College at Wagga or Hawkesbury and I learnt they were undertaking a program much more like the one I had envisaged. After failing a couple of subjects in first year, I spent many sleepless nights contemplating whether I should try and make the shift to ag college.

To this day though I have never regretted the decision I made to stick it out and face first year for a second time. I expect it was largely due to my stubbornness and determination not to let my parents or myself down. I was the first person from our family to have gone to university and I was proud of that fact. I was also conscious of the expectation that, after having done well at school on most fronts, I would succeed.

I also think the fact that two of my best mates also needed to repeat first year helped me decide. Both Peter and Des were city boys and their parents were both incredibly hospitable to me which made city living by then so much more bearable.

Even though I have never regretted my decision to continue with university study - despite the significant challenges that confronted me - when I have been asked in later life what I would do differently if I could have my time over again, I always say the one thing I wouldn’t do is go directly from school to university.

My state of mind gradually improves

Second year subjects in the degree were not much more stimulating to me than the first year subjects and, once again, I found myself needing to repeat a couple of subjects. Physical Chemistry was one subject in which I particularly had trouble finding any relevance to my future career.

However, I became more engaged in university life, particularly interfaculty sport – rugby, cricket, baseball, table tennis…you name it - I was involved. Despite the relatively small size of the Agriculture Faculty we usually held our own. Having Wallaby winger Terry Forman playing for us certainly helped our rugby pursuits!

Some staff members would show their displeasure when we would arrive 30 minutes late for the afternoon session of a Botany or Biochem prac after a game of rugby, but most were reasonably tolerant!

When I finally made it to third year, I started to see more relevance to agriculture in many of the subjects we studied. Unfortunately for me though, as had been the case in earlier years, some lecturers were just that and their approach to knowledge transfer didn’t suit my way of learning. When I reflect, though, I realise just how knowledgeable these lecturers were and how I regret not being ready to gain maximum benefit from their knowledge and expertise. People like Prof Collis-George, Brian Davey and KO Campbell fitted this category. I failed Soils first time round in third year, despite the best efforts of Collis-George and Brian Davey.

It is quite ironic that, after I became a vocational education teacher with TAFE (Technical & Further Education), one of the subjects I was asked to teach in the Horticulture Certificate course was Soil Science. Anyone who has ever been a teacher will know that a thorough understanding of your topic is essential for success. In acquiring this understanding in order to teach many of the same principles conveyed to me in Soils lectures at University, I had many lightbulb moments! In fact I fell in love with the subject and realised the main thing I had lacked when listening to the fountains of knowledge conveyed by Collis-George and Brian Davey was context.

After becoming a teacher and then undertaking post-graduate programs at both university and TAFE, I realised that having a context for learning any theory is vital for understanding.

Teaching TAFE horticulture students was therefore relatively easy for me because most were in employment and were learning things that related to their employment, i.e., they had a context for the information provided to them.

When I finally made it to 4th year Ag Science I was enjoying my studies. Apart from the fact that I had matured as a person, most of the subjects we studied had relevance and a context for me. I really enjoyed subjects like Agronomy and Forestry. Frank Crofts was someone I greatly admired and learnt much from. Wal Gentle brought a much more pragmatic approach to learning than most lecturers and he made Forestry so interesting and potentially such a good long term investment that I think many of us were tempted to find a way to make the plunge then and there!

I took the so-called Gen Ag B stream in 4th year, which despite the name, was for those of us who wished to specialise in farm management and consulting. This meant our final year thesis involved preparing a farm plan/budget for an actual farm enterprise. I had the challenge of preparing a five year plan and budget for a ‘Pitt street farmer’ who was a medico by profession and had purchased a cattle farm in the Southern Highlands of NSW. This type of challenge was what I naively thought I was heading to uni to undertake several years earlier! So I was finally enjoying my studies and obtaining satisfaction from my efforts.

I mentioned earlier in my ramblings that I wasn’t eligible for a living away from home allowance even though I had obtained a Commonwealth Scholarship which paid my university fees. This meant that all through Uni I generally lived on the ‘smell of an oily rag’, as the saying goes. I undertook part-time work whenever I could, particularly in the years I repeated subjects and had time to work during the week. I worked at various times as a builder’s labourer and a brickie’s labourer. I worked in a shoe factory and an engineering factory and I was employed by ‘Whelan the Wrecker’ to help dismantle old buildings in Sydney. One year I also worked on a poultry farm in Pennant Hills for a couple of days a week.

During university holidays I mostly took the opportunity to return to the family farm to help out with whatever was needed at the time. I also took other opportunities including managing a clover harvesting operation in the Cootamundra area and working on an orchard near Orange. Not only was all this good experience but it enabled me to meet the farm practical experience requirement of the degree as well as earn some much needed pocket money.

The discovery of teaching as a potential career

The most satisfying ‘job’ I undertook, though, was in the final years of my time at Sydney Uni when I was appointed as a resident housemaster at Wyvern House, Newington College. For free board, the five resident housemasters (mostly university students) cared for the boarders before and after school. We were also on duty for one weekend in five and had responsibility for coaching sports teams. During this time I also undertook some part-time teaching at a local private high school – mainly PE but some maths and science.

In addition to assisting financially, both these opportunities brought me to the realisation that I gained a great deal of satisfaction from assisting people with their learning. I also realised that it was something that I was intrinsically good at doing.

After graduating in 1971 I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I had the opportunity to do some farm consulting but I wasn’t keen to pursue a full-time job with the consultancy firm in question because I would have needed to undertake general business consulting as well as farm consulting and this didn’t appeal to me. Rather serendipitously at that time, the NSW Department of Education advertised for university graduates to undertake a crash Dip Ed course to help address a serious shortage of science and maths teachers in high schools. I applied for a position, was accepted and successfully completed the six month intensive program through what was then Balmain Teachers College. During this time I also did some part-time teaching in the Horticulture Certificate course at Ryde.

I won’t go into detail of how it all came about, but I was fortunate (and pleased!) in September 1971 to obtain a full-time job with the Department of Technical Education (now TAFE) as a Teacher of Agriculture rather than taking up a job as a high school teacher which the Department of Education expected me to do! The position I was appointed to was based at the then Ryde School of Horticulture in Sydney. Even though I taught a couple of subjects to students studying the Agriculture Certificate course through Sydney Technical College in Ultimo, most of my teaching was in the Horticulture Certificate course at Ryde. Subjects I taught included Entomology, Plant Pathology, Soil Science and Botany. The horticulture students were either working in, or aspiring to work in, one of the branches of amenity horticulture: nursery, landscaping, parks and gardens, green-keeping, turf management and floriculture.

When I reflect on this time, I realise that not only did the degree in Agricultural Science open the door to my future career (BScAgr or equivalent was the required qualification for my first full time job), but the diversity of subjects we studied in Ag Science and the breadth of experiences gained, meant I was well prepared for any challenge that teaching vocational students studying agriculture or horticulture presented.

I really enjoyed my role as a vocational education teacher and felt early on that a long term career in education was a possibility. This possibility actually turned into a reality and I spent the next 36 years involved in vocational education.

A temporary diversion and discovery of the pitfalls of tropical agriculture

My commitment to a career in teaching and education was, however, tested within the first twelve months. This is a story in itself, but I will attempt to summarise.

After a seven week stint managing the corn planting operations at Lakeland Downs station in far north Queensland during my first long vacation as a teacher - Dec 1971/Jan 1972, I was offered an opportunity to pursue a career as an agricultural consultant in conjunction with a mate (Barry) from school with a farming background and who had completed a Diploma of Agriculture at Wagga Ag College.

Barry was the Operations Manager at Lakeland Downs station (owned by Clive Foyster) and he had asked me to manage the challenge of planting 10,000 acres of corn after needing to sack the previous manager just prior to the commencement of planting.

The corn planting goal and an equivalent sorghum planting goal of 10,000 acres were severely impacted that year by monsoon rains that came several weeks early. Clive Foyster called in an American business consultant based in Brisbane to help guide the ship from a financial perspective with the goal of minimising the losses.

What had happened at Lakeland Downs with a significant financial loss from the cropping ventures was a common story for similar attempts to ‘conquer the north’ from a cropping perspective in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

The business consultant Jim and my mate Barry, however, were captivated by the potential of cropping in the tropics and believed that there must be a solution and, when found, there would be gold at the end of the rainbow!

I was invited to partner Barry in forming an agricultural consulting arm of Jim’s business. I could also see the enormous potential, but couldn’t help but think there must be good reasons why every major cropping venture in the north had failed and I needed to know more before I would commit to trying to find the solution — if there was one! So in June 1972 I took a week’s leave without pay from my teaching job and, after flying to Darwin and hiring a car, I joined Barry on a trip through the Northern Territory and across to Kununurra in Western Australia to visit the then recently started Ord River Irrigation Scheme.

We visited Humpty Doo, Mount Bundy, Tipperary and Willeroo stations in the Northern Territory. What we observed was heartbreaking with millions of dollars of cropping machinery and equipment left out in the open to rust. Every cropping venture that had been attempted on the stations we visited had failed and most had returned to virtually sole reliance on livestock production.

We thought things may be different with the Ord River Scheme as they had the massive Argyle Lake from which crops could be irrigated. However, we discovered little success with cropping there either. Cotton was being harvested at the time and, even though the yields were good, the farmers told us they wouldn’t make any money because they had needed to spray for Heliothis caterpillars every other day.

By the time Barry and I returned to Darwin, I had decided that a career in teaching and education was looking good! I had concluded that ‘conquering the north’ from an agricultural cropping perspective was beyond me as it had been beyond anyone else to that day — and interestingly has been beyond anyone to this day some 50 years later. Whilst cropping operations are still undertaken as part of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme, an expenditure to date of over $1.5 billion in public money has reportedly only returned around 17 cents on the dollar and less than 300 jobs have been created (Matt Grudnoff & Rod Campbell, The Australia Institute, 28 July 2017).

From the experience I had gained at Lakeland Downs in Queensland along with the observations made and reports received in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, I came to the conclusion that the major reasons for the failure to conquer the North are: the idyllic conditions for growing crops are also idyllic conditions for weeds, pests and diseases; the climatic conditions along with the relative isolation make recruitment and retention of labour difficult and expensive; monsoonal rains are not as predictable or as suitable for summer crop production as people are led to believe; and access to markets is often difficult and expensive.

In relation to the Ord River Irrigation Scheme particularly, the outcome from an economic perspective is testimony to the foresight, courage and expertise of Bruce Davidson who was our thought-provoking lecturer in agricultural economics. Bruce published The Northern Myth: a Study of the Physical and Economic Limits to Agricultural and Pastoral Development in Tropical Australia in 1965, with a third edition in 1972. In this publication, he argues strongly that intensive farming in tropical Australia is not economically viable. If I recall correctly, he also argued in his lectures that a number of irrigation schemes in Australia that had been developed or were planned could not be justified, at least from a purely economic perspective.

A timely entry to a career in vocational education

I returned to my job at the Ryde School of Horticulture in June 1972, determined to take advantage of the enormous potential a teaching career in horticulture at that time presented. The amenity horticulture industry was starting to expand at a fairly rapid rate with nurseries, landscaping businesses and parks and recreation enterprises all experiencing growth in demand for their products and services. This meant a significant increase in the demand for labour and thus an increase in the demand for education and training.

In December that year (1972), I married Pauline who I had met 12 months previously. We recently celebrated 50 years of marriage with our two daughters, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren. Pauline was a telephonist/receptionist when I met her and I am very fortunate and grateful that she has supported me through the years to pursue a career in vocational education that has required us to move to several different locations in the State.

Over the next six years, I embraced the opportunities that my teaching position presented and undertook further education along with gaining practical experience to enable me to be designated as a Teacher of Horticulture as well as a Teacher of Agriculture. This positioned me to apply for promotion and in early 1978, after obtaining accelerated progression, I was appointed as a Head Teacher of Horticulture.

Less than two years later, the then Head of Division of Horticulture with TAFE NSW resigned for health reasons. After an extensive Australia/NZ wide recruitment process, I was pleasantly surprised to be appointed to the position. This role had state-wide responsibility and I was delighted over the following ten years to lead the expansion of the TAFE NSW Horticulture Division. We went from three centres with facilities and teachers delivering horticulture courses in the State in 1979 to 11 centres in 1989. The number of full-time teachers in the Division increased from 27 in 1979 to 123 in 1989; I was responsible for the recruitment of every one of the 96 new teachers statewide. I also managed the recruitment of 15 head teachers and senior head teachers during this time.

The strong demand for education and training for the amenity horticulture industry meant we not only needed to revise existing courses but we needed to develop new ones. Every course was developed in close consultation with the specific horticulture industry sector and by the mid-1980s we had a suite of 12 accredited major award courses at the Certificate, Advanced Certificate and Diploma levels. We also developed a number of specialist short courses in demand such as Permaculture and Horticulture Techniques for Therapy. I obtained great satisfaction liaising with industry representatives to develop curricula, as it enabled me to ensure that everything we asked our teachers to teach and our students to learn was relevant to each student’s chosen career.

I mentioned earlier that one of the subjects I was required to teach in the Horticulture Certificate course when I first commenced teaching in 1971 was Soil Science. After many lightbulb moments, understanding for the first time what Brian Davey had been talking about in his lectures at Uni, I totally revamped the Soil Science syllabus. As there was no appropriate soils text for amenity horticulture students, I wrote notes for the students. NSW University Press approached me in the early 1980s about publishing the notes as a textbook. I wasn’t totally confident about accomplishing what was required and, what’s more, didn’t feel I had the time. So I approached Kevin Handreck from CSIRO in South Australia who had written a number of small soils booklets for practitioners which were excellent publications.

The result was that Kevin came on board and after three years of research and writing we published the first edition of Growing Media for Ornamental Plants & Turf by KA Handreck & ND Black in 1984. The book was highly successful as a text and reference book for students across Australia and even overseas. To this day, it is regarded by many amenity horticulture practitioners as their ‘bible’ in regard to anything to do with soils and other growing media. An indication of the success of this publication is that there have been four editions and six reprints of the book with the last edition published in 2010. Kevin is a brilliant writer and was the principal author but I am proud to have initiated the project and guided the content, particularly for the first edition.

Another achievement during the 1980s for which I am extremely proud is my contribution to the initiation, planning and establishment of the ‘best amenity horticulture teaching facilities in the world’! This project, which was completed in 1988, involved the demolition of all the old and outdated facilities at the Ryde School of Horticulture and the construction of state-of-the-art facilities for supporting the teaching of all aspects of horticulture. This included laboratories, workshops, greenhouses, classrooms, library, and student and staff facilities.

In 1988 I was made a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Horticulture and the following year I was honoured to receive the 1989 Australian Institute of Horticulture Award of Excellence for outstanding contribution to Australian Horticulture.

Promotion leads to a career shift and a move back to the country

After a fabulously rewarding 10 years as the TAFE Head of Division of Horticulture, in 1989 TAFE NSW was totally restructured. Part of the restructure by the then State Government was to create a number of senior positions as part of the newly formed Senior Executive Service (SES). The reason for creating the SES was to enable senior positions to be employed on three- or five-year performance based contracts but with significantly higher salaries. This enabled the Public Service to better compete with private enterprise for the personnel they required. It also made it easier to sack under-performing staff. I was delighted to obtain one of the new SES positions - State Manager of the Rural & Mining Industry Training Division within the newly formed NSW TAFE Commission. My salary increased from around $50k as a Head of Division to a $77k package as a State Manager. In 1989 this was considered a very good salary.

At this time (1989/90), the NSW Department of Agriculture was in the process of relocating its headquarters from Sydney to Orange. A major reason for the decentralisation strategy was to encourage and enable talented officers based in regional NSW to apply for senior positions in the Department.

It was suggested that a similar move may be appropriate for the TAFE Rural and Mining Industry Training Division as we were needing to recruit agriculture industry specialists in Crop Production, Animal Production and Wool Classing and the same recruitment issues applied as they did for the Department of Agriculture. I could see this would be a smart move and so I organised office space in Orange and we established the Division there. I recruited the agriculture industry specialists, the mining industry specialist, the curriculum specialists and administration staff to be based in Orange. However, we made the decision to base the two amenity horticulture industry specialist positions at Ryde in Sydney.

One of my proudest achievements in the role of State Manager of the Rural & Mining Industry Training Division was to develop, in consultation with agriculture industry representatives across the State, a Rural Skills Centre Strategy for TAFE.

There was demand for a significant increase in TAFE-delivered courses for farmers and others wishing to work in agriculture at the technical and practitioner level. However, most TAFE colleges in country towns had been constructed in the town’s CBD and did not have any land available for agriculture practical skills training. Whilst cooperating farmers were happy to accommodate students who had developed basic skills in things like machinery operation and animal handling, the TAFE teachers needed sufficient land and facilities to teach these basic skills before the students were ‘let loose’ on a real farm. The Rural Skills Centre Strategy document became the TAFE NSW blueprint for the purchase of land and construction of suitable facilities for teaching across the State and 12 Rural Skills Centres were established over the following few years.

The other achievement as State Manager for which I am most proud was to initiate and then help drive the implementation of flexible delivery, also known as flexible learning, for people on the land to undertake education and training programs.

People on the land who for various reasons were unable to access full-time courses, or face-to-face part-time courses, could access a range of courses by correspondence offered by a number of educational institutions. However, this mode of learning doesn’t suit a lot of people. Many of these people undertook no formal learning despite their desire to do so.

At this time, TAFE in South Australia had, in conjunction with the farming industry, developed and successfully implemented a course titled the Certificate in Rural Office Practice (CROP course as it was known) specifically for those on the land who managed the farm books. What was different with this course was that it was offered as a mix of correspondence supported by weekend face-to-face workshops at a time and place to suit the students. The teachers also kept in contact with the students by telephone.

I arranged for one of the agriculture industry specialists to visit South Australia to assess this program as the delivery method, known as ‘flexible delivery’, greatly appealed. The outcome was that we introduced the course into NSW and it was an outstanding success. Within three years there were several hundred students enrolled across the State, over 80% were women on the land and the completion rate for the two year course was over 80%.

I was so impressed with the concept of flexible delivery that, over the following 25 years, I became a passionate advocate for flexible delivery of a whole range of TAFE programs, particularly for students based in regional and rural areas.

Further career shift - from a discipline focus to educational leadership

I mentioned earlier that NSW TAFE was totally restructured in 1989 following a review driven by the then State Government. A major goal of the restructure was to decentralise decision-making from a bloated Head Office in Sydney. As well as the establishment of training divisions, which is the line my career headed, the restructure grouped the 120 TAFE colleges across the State into 24 networks and created 24 network manager positions as part of the SES. The network managers reported to one of three group general managers. In brief, this part of the restructure was a disaster! It was top heavy and confusing from a decision-making perspective.

The Minister at the time (John Fahey) appointed Dr Gregory Ramsey, a highly regarded educator from South Australia as Managing Director of TAFE, and Gregory totally restructured the delivery of TAFE programs across the State. He created 10 institutes to which the 120 colleges were allocated on a geographical basis. Each institute was headed by an Institute Director who reported directly to the MD who reported to the Minister; thus two layers of bureaucracy were removed as the network managers had reported to a group general manager who reported to the deputy managing director who reported to the MD.

The other major decision was to provide each Institute with a global budget and total control over staff recruitment and management.

It was a bit of a shock to me as well as many of the 24 network managers and the three group general managers when I was appointed as Institute Director for the Western Institute of TAFE. At the time, the Institute comprised 22 colleges from Lithgow to Broken Hill, enrolled 23,000 students and had a total of 1,500 full-time and part-time staff. Our budget was $52m. As someone said to me at the time, ‘not bad for a boy from the bush who had struggled to get through Ag Science at Sydney Uni’!

Whilst I continued to oversee the Rural and Mining Training Division for the next few years, the focus of my role naturally needed to shift to the leadership and management of the delivery of all TAFE programs across half the geographical area of NSW.

Thankfully, I had some excellent mentors I could call on as well as my previous leadership experience, even though at a different level. The first three years were particularly challenging as I arranged to put the ‘right people in the right positions’ and then create an appropriate organisational culture throughout the Institute. I am pleased that, thanks to a group of dedicated and talented people, we had a great deal of success as an educational institution, capped off in 1999 by being awarded the highly regarded NSW Training Provider of the Year.

After an initial 3-year contract, I was reappointed and remained in the Western Institute position from my appointment in 1991 until June 2000 when I applied for and was appointed to the position of Institute Director of the North Coast Institute of TAFE based in Port Macquarie. Thankfully, after living through nine Orange winters, Pauline didn’t need to be persuaded to move to the Mid North Coast.

My new role presented a totally new challenge. After implementing some major changes over the first 18 months of my tenure and again ensuring the right people were in the right positions, North Coast Institute, with 40,000 students, 2.500 staff and a budget of $110m, really flourished. In both 2004 and 2005 we were awarded NSW Large Training Provider of the Year with the big prize also in 2004 of Australian Large Training Provider of the Year. Once again, even though I am proud of my role as their leader, I give the major credit to the highly committed and talented staff who were totally focused on serving both the students and industry sectors that sought education and training for their employees.

An active retirement follows a rewarding career

I had always planned to retire from full-time work when I turned 60. As I had had a very successful and satisfying six years as CEO of the North Coast Institute of TAFE, I saw no reason to deviate from this plan. So, in April 2006 I finished my career with TAFE, very thankful for a fortunate career in vocational education that had been made possible by graduating in 1971 with a degree in Agricultural Science from Sydney University.

I was extremely honoured to be nominated for and receive the Public Service Medal in the 2007 Australia Day Honours Awards for services to education.

After retiring from NSW TAFE I was both surprised and chuffed to be in demand as a consultant and speaker, particularly in the field of educational leadership. I took up a number of these opportunities over the next three years, timed around a number of trips that Pauline and I had planned both in Australia and overseas.

However, a major reason for retiring from full-time work was to become involved in the local community and I decided that I needed to give away the consulting to do so.

Over the next 10 years I became involved with the Meals on Wheels organisation. This included leading the amalgamation of seven separate Meals on Wheels services on the Mid North Coast and chairing the Board of Meals on Wheels Mid North Coast for several years.

In 2009 I also joined the Rotary Club of Port Macquarie Sunrise and, to this day, consider this decision one of the best I have ever made. I discovered Rotary generally is a fabulous organisation and I was particularly fortunate to join a very vibrant club. I have had the opportunity to take on a number of leadership roles, including Community Service Director on a number of occasions and President in 2022-2023.

I was honoured in 2017 to be named Senior Citizen of the Year for the Port Macquarie-Hastings region. And even though this recognition for community service is appreciated, I feel that I am really the major beneficiary because my well-being is greatly enhanced.

Over the past few years, connecting again with colleagues from our Ag ‘71 graduation cohort has not only been enjoyable, but it has prompted me to seriously reflect on how blessed we were to have the opportunity we did through the Sydney Uni Ag Faculty to obtain the springboard for what has been for me a very fortunate adult life.

For anyone interested, in 2021, I self-published my full life story in a memoir titled Reflections on a Fortunate Life. A copy may be obtained by emailing neil.black16@hotmail.com.