Grahame & Rochelle 

Grahame and Rochelle are a husband-and-wife team who have spent 22 years — and most of their working lives — restoring habitat on their properties and practicing that people and nature are better off working together. Both hold a Bachelor of Environmental Science from the University of Newcastle. Grahame has spent more than two decades in land, fire and biosecurity management, completing bush regeneration and rainforest restoration across the Coffs Harbour and the Orara Valley, running ecological and cultural burning programs on the North Coast and before that vertebrate pest management across the Hunter Valley. Rochelle started out as an environmental officer and consultant before moving into major infrastructure, where she now directs government-funded programs and has recently started her own company Aplly Pty Ltd. Between them they bring the two halves of any good restoration project: Grahame the boots-on-the-ground ecological know-how, Rochelle the planning, governance and funding discipline. Both founded Habitat Revival with the aim of making a difference on private land.

Away from work, they’re raising two daughters who are as at home in the plant nursery as anywhere — collecting and propagating local seed for the plants that will one day become restored forest. The family are active members of Orara Valley Landcare and regulars at community planting days, and at their previous property at Corindi Beach they planted over 5,000 native trees and watched the birds and mammals return. Grahame and Rochelle’s whole approach — restoring habitat while running a productive property — comes from a genuine belief that a balance between the two should be the norm.

Our property

In 2025 we took on 60 acres on the Orara River at Karangi — a working cattle property named Hidden Valley, and we intend to restore the waterways and corridors from the river up to the surrounding native forest. The land has a long frontage to the Orara River and Undumburra Creek, with remnants of subtropical lowland rainforest we want to expand into a continuous corridor along the waterways. The drier ridgelines will be reconnected with native eucalypt forest, while cattle keep grazing the country in between — our proof that a property can carry stock and rebuild habitat at the same time.

What we’re doing:

• Restoring the riparian zones along the Orara River and Undumburra Creek to stabilise banks and shade out weeds
• Removing invasive privet, senna, madeira vine, cats claw creeper and camphor laurel and replanting with local species
• Reconnecting the ridgelines with mixed hardwood eucalypt forest to link the river with the surrounding bush
• Growing our own stock through on-site seed collection and propagation in our small family nursery
• Controlling pest animals, including foxes and wild dogs, to protect the native fauna moving back in
• Restoring whole ecosystems — rebuilding the habitat, food and shelter that keep native birds, mammals, reptiles and insects healthy