Brien Nelson – park ranger and artist

'I'm Brien Nelson and I'm from Mooroopna in Fruit Salad City.'

Brien Nelson is a ranger with Parks Victoria, traditional owner and the leader of Jaara country, and an artist.

Brien has worn many hats; as a farm manager working for the Indigenous Land Corporation near Balranald in New South Wales, a security guard at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne and then in tourism at Lake Conda. He then moved to Portland and Warrnambool, this time as a ranger for Parks Victoria, policing the coastline for poachers of abalone and other fish life.

Life as a ranger for 15 years included many adventures, including sighting the (almost) mythical black panther roaming around lake Conda, fining poachers, and fighting bushfires in Gippsland, around Colac and across the South Australian border.

Brien spent his childhood in Central Victoria around Shepparton. He has memories of living on the Barmah Lakes, where his father cut wood to be burnt and transported for domestic fires in Melbourne.

Brien lived along the Goulburn River and attended Shepparton Technical College until he was 13 years old.

'The day I turned 14 my grandmother and auntie came over to Shepparton on the bus…took me out of college to go to work.'

Part of a large family, Brien was put to work picking tomatoes, picking apricots for the canneries, peaches and pears.

He met Jeannie Chapman one season at work in Shepparton. They moved between her family in Castlemaine, where Brien found work at the woolen mill and bacon factory, until the picking season opened again at the cannery in Mooroopna. When his son Micky was born the family to Burke on the Queensland border to find work trapping and shooting rabbits.

Brien is a traditional owner and the leader of Jaara country, which extends from Mount Macedon near Melbourne, to Campaspe, west to Lake Bort, and Creswick.

Brien is part of the Mindy Cultural Dance Group, which performed for the Dalai Lama during one of his visits to Australia. He also runs Songline Cultural Tours, which organises groups to see Aboriginal sites, led by local Indigenous guides. Brien dreams of expanding the business to introduce important places and sites to more visitors and school groups to teach them the ways of preserving and protecting those sites.