Published: 31 Mar 2025
From Angora rabbit shearer to Banbai Ranger, 62-year-old Aunty Lesley Patterson has led a fascinating life, but counts herself lucky to be working on Country.
My name is Lesley Patterson and I am a Banbai Ranger with the Guyra Aboriginal Land Council. I live on my traditional Banbai Country in the little village of Backwater, about 26km north-east of Guyra on the New England Tablelands in northern NSW. I’ve been a Ranger since 2009 and I’m the only female Ranger on our small team, there’s just me and the four boys.
Celebrity Shearer
Before becoming a Ranger I was a shearer – of French Angora rabbits! I’d been out of work for a while and I saw this job working on a local rabbit farm where they were raising the Angoras for their fleece. I started doing general cleaning and odd jobs and then the manager asked if I wanted to learn how to shear, so that’s how I got into it. You had to get through about 15 rabbits a day and you had to be careful not to cut them because they’re so small. And that’s how I ended up on [ABC show] Landline – they come up and done a series on the Angora rabbit and I just happened to be shearing that day, so I ended up on TV.
Being a Ranger
I’ve always loved being out on Country, seeing what I can do for the environment, for our little patch of ground, and I have the knowledge. So if I have the knowledge, I could pass it on to my nieces, nephews, grandchildren, all that. So that was the inspiration for becoming a Ranger, looking after Country and learning about Country as I went, then passing it on.
When you’re out on Country you’re talking to ancestors, you know, walking through the scrub, just talking to ancestors and seeing what’s coming up on your Country, like the flowers and trees at Wattleridge Indigenous Protected Area. Our property (the IPA) backs onto Warra National Park, it’s granite country with all these massive boulders and because of that it’s never run livestock so there’s lots of native vegetation – it’s got cleared areas but we look after that, make sure there’s no weeds.
We have a rare black grevillea, it’s only found in the Backwater area and it’s on our property, along with other rare and endangered species. We’ve also got heaps of kangaroos, quolls, just heaps of biodiversity, both flora and fauna. We do all different types of jobs every day and when you’ve got good people to work with, it doesn’t feel like work.
We actually work over two areas, the Tarriwa Kurrukun IPA as well as Wattleridge. Tarriwa is more on the western side of our Country and it’s different to Wattleridge. It’s part of the home range of the Bells turtle which is an endangered species and right now we’re working with Local Land Services to put electric fences up so that the foxes don’t eat the turtle eggs and kill all the turtles.
Totems and Culture
We’ve got two important totems, the kukra which is what we call the echidna in Banbai language, and we also have the glossy black cockatoo. The kukra is our emblem, both for our people and the Banbai Rangers, while the black cockatoo is the emblem for the Guyra Land Council and for Wattleridge IPA.
Our Ranger work has been really good for bringing our mob back. We’re taking the kids out on Country, whether they’re school kids or just from our families, you know, taking them out and showing them something different. We done a night burn, all my grandkids came out and they were so amazed, like, ‘when can we do this again?’
Honestly, the young ones are teaching us too, just the enthusiasm they’ve got – they all want to be Rangers when they grow up. When I retire I’m hoping that all my nieces and nephews will have a job working on Country and being on the Country that they love, yeah.
Strong Women on Country
I think I’d be one of the oldest women Rangers. I’m 62 but I don’t feel it, being on Country just invigorates you. The way I grew up, Mum always used home remedies from tea tree and eucalyptus and the like, she taught us to love Country and it was just part of our being.
Being an Aboriginal woman empowers me, I grew up with strong black women all my life and I dare say I’ll continue to do that. But how lucky am I to live at this time, to do what I’m doing at this time in my life. It empowers you, you can make decisions about your Country and not have to take orders from anyone else. You have the say on your Country and no-one else can take that away from you.
-Lesley Patterson