Barbara and Stan Pelczynska – my personal tribute to your joint wonderful generous passionate conservation movement out of Bendigo
Thursday, July 23rd, 2026
Bendigo Victoria (17th October 2016): Barbara Pelczynska shown here with Steven Ridd visiting from afar on a trip to family and friends in Victoria. Both share the deep sorrow for the loss so unnecessarily of this iconic magnificent local Native elder directly across the street by tragic bureacratic killing. It was healthy with no internal disease and must have been 300 years old.
Bless you Barbara and Stan (Stanislaw). We’ll always celebrate Barbara’s particular conservation commitment legacy, with her husband Stan always by her side. Barbara, a beautiful tireless activist leader so jointly committed to unwavering passion to protect the values of Nature and with total support from her devoted life husband Stan. We personally share such unwavering commitment.
My personal tribute to you both for you joint wonderful generous passionate conservation campaigns out of Bendigo to championing Nature by itself and Nature Conservation as I came to realise had become her lifetime dedication. Beautiful. I also personally thank you with Stan both for your encouragement, generous donations towards The Habitat Advocate and then for your kind hospitality to me and my wife in your home upon our agreed call-in visit to Bendigo back in 2016.
Our experience was such a warm encounter with you and Stan and such a wonderful opportunity for my wife and I during our road travels to venture out of our way to finally meet up with you both face-to-face generously in your home in Bendigo at your invitation. Marvellous memory!
Thank you very much for your life dedication to conserving Australian forest ecology. Some people are very special well beyond their backyard and indeed beyond just across the street. God Bless your shared passion for Nature.
Colonial Echuca’s logging legacy
Conclusion.
“When we are healthy, we tend to be unaware of the presence of our organs in our bodies and of the functions they perform. Only when one of our organs fails and we have to replace its functions by artificial means do we become aware of how valuable and well performed its function was.
It seems to us that our attitude to the natural environment is the same as it is to our bodies. The air conditioner, water purifiers and desalination plants should make us aware of the value of the services our natural ecosystems provide us with (Constanza et al 1997 estimated the value of world’s ecosystem services as being more than double the global gross national product, remarking that in a sense it is infinite, as without it economy would grind to a halt). Yet somehow we fail or refuse to see the connection. The danger is that when eventually we wake up to it, it will be too late to stop the consequences of our abuse of the environment.
It is for this reason that we have included the issue of cultural maladaptation in our submission. Because a number of important issues, including those relating specifically to the Fraser Island’s dingo and to Bendigo region as well to the ecological reasons for rejecting COAG’s proposal for handing Federal Government’s responsibility for environmental approval to the states are covered in the two submissions to the Committee we are endorsing, we have decided not to duplicate them in our submission.
Finally we would like to draw the Committee’s attention to two books, “Legacy”(Suzuki 2010) and “Resetting the Compass”(Yencken and Wilkinson 2000, in particular chapter 13, “The four pillars of wisdom”), as they explain in a very comprehensive way the issues we have raised in our submission.”
by Stanislaw Pelczynski and Barbara Pelczynska
“ENERGETIC: Barbara Pelczynska, 78, tries her skill at skateboarding. ” Her legacy photo is one of being engaged with the contemporary young conservationist movement.
References and Further Reading:
[1] ‘Life’s just full of fun‘, 2008-05-20, by Bendigo Advertiser (newspaper, Victoria, Australia), ^https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/689901/lifes-just-full-of-fun/ (access by subscription only)
[2] ‘Submission on the Effectiveness of Threatened Species and Ecological Communities’ Protection in Australia‘, 2012-12-10, by Barbara and Stanislaw Pelczynski,
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