Here in our headquarters in Perth (which is located on Noongar country) we’re coming to the end of the Makuru season and are about to start the Djilba season - where we see a massive explosion of yellow around Perth as the acacias and other yellow flowering plants start to bloom. Which feels just about right for where we are at Gaia Resources, as we enter our 22nd year of operation.
As we closed out the 2024-2025 financial year we also closed out a few of our projects, which was a nice end to the financial year, but still bittersweet. One of the projects we “finished” was the Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR) build project for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. In this project, we have delivered the front end systems and ingestion pipelines for this important system that delivers data into the Department to support better decision making under the Environmental Impact Assessment process (as was recommended under the Samuels Review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act). We’ve been involved with the BDR for a few years now - and will continue to do so into the future - but this marked a nice waypoint on the journey we’ve been on to stop and take a look at what we have delivered as we move into the supporting phase of the project over the next year.
There’s been a few other projects that we’ve been working on over this last financial year that have really contributed to our mission statement and been rewarding for us as a team as well, including:
- Undertaking a proof of concept with the WA Biodiversity Science Institute on undertaking species distribution modelling, area of occupancy calculations, data cleansing and vegetation association modelling in their Shared Environmental Analytics Facility,
- Reviewing the technology and developing a roadmap for the National Species Lists, which included working with colleagues right around Australia that utilise the valuable taxonomic backbone that is delivered through Parks Australia,
- Working with the NSW BioNet team, reviewing and redesigning the underlying infrastructure and data delivery mechanisms for the BioNet system, and
- Continuing to deliver archival support to our colleagues at the Public Records Office Victoria and the State Records Office of Western Australia.
Archives have been a big part of our last year - we are in the final testing phases for the large “evegreening” project we’ve been working on for the Queensland State Archives, along with our partners at Hudson Molonglo. That project reviewed the entire system we have delivered over the last seven years, including the ArchivesGateway, ArchivesSpace, ArchivesSearch and Archivematica systems we have in place. This has been a nice way to ensure that the systems are up to date as we move into the next couple of years of supporting the systems.
Moving into a support phase is something that comes with a lot of emotions for us as well - although I don’t know this first hand, it feels like our baby is growing up and leaving the nest. So we do find that when this sort of thing ends there’s a bit of a transition and in the last financial year we’ve had a few people leave Gaia Resources to pursue other opportunities and directions - but thank you to Gordon, Dean, Edwin and Diego who did work with us! But with endings come new beginnings - and Jarrad Lawrence has just started with us as our new Business Development Manager.
So while thinking about new beginnings we’ve also got some really interesting projects already kicking off, with a big focus on the environmental area that we work in. These projects do focus on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 - Life on Land. Specifically we are working with some large mining proponents to improve the way that they manage their biodiversity data, with new data models, processes and the like that will ultimately mean that they can manage their impacts on biodiversity in a much more sustainable and accountable way than they did before. Working with extractive industries does have its challenges, but they are an important part of achieving many of the UN SDGs. Our work with the BDR and these companies all connects through the Environmental Impact Assessment area (and you will see me at the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand 2025 Impact Assessment Symposium in Sydney next month to talk about these projects, too).
Also there are a number of other new projects on the cards, including some interesting archival projects on the horizon. These type of projects in the archival area contribute to UN SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. This will also be combined with a few events in the next year - notably, we will be attending the iPRES 2025 International Conference on Digital Preservation conference in Wellington later in the year (where I hope to avoid the horrendous jet lag I had last time we were in New Zealand in 2024 for the Australian Society of Archives conference, so please send me all your tips on avoiding or recovering from jet lag!).
So a new financial year is upon us again, and as the colours around us in Perth change to be more yellow, we are ready to kick off the new season. We’ve taken a bit of a break over the last few weeks to take a rest, reset and we’re ready to get started - but we’re also looking for challenges, so if you’ve got some that you want to discuss, then feel free to get in touch with either myself or Jarrad, give us a call on (08) 92277309, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram.
Piers