[ Women we admire ]
Winds of change
Bree Lacey, 31
Growing up spending weekends and
holidays at her aunt and uncle’s farm,
Bree Lacey has long had a love of the
outdoors. “We always had pets. Mum
always thought I’d be a real hippy.
I don’t know where that came from, but
it did start at a really young age,” the
Environment Business Manager says.
She majored in environmental science
and zoology at university, then took up a
position as an environmental consultant
in construction and ended up working
on the Macarthur Wind Farm in Victoria.
“It was a really deep learning curve.
You develop a tough skin,” says Bree,
who, as one of only two female
graduates, felt outnumbered at times.
While most of the graduates focused
on engineering, Bree was concerned
with the conservation of significant
vegetation and animals living on the
grazing land in Victoria. Part of her job
was to protect the striped legless lizard,
a tiny marsupial called the fat-tailed
dunnart and the brolga, a threatened
native crane that can grow to 1.3 metres
tall. “We had to do clearance to make
sure there was nothing significant in the
area,” Bree says. “So you’re telling the
excavators where not to go. It wasn’t the
easiest job, but I learnt so much from it.”
Bree is now in a senior management
role in the renewables sector at AGL
and one of the sites she oversees is the
wind farm, the largest in the Southern
Hemisphere – its 140 turbines generate
enough electricity to power 173,000
homes. “We’re the only wind farm that
has a significant species,” Bree says,
referring to the brolga. “They return
to the wind farm every year and they
breed. We see the chicks.”
She feels in her element. “I always had
a passion for the environment.” »