Advocate: Maria Hitchcock ready to support the New England

Anyone familiar with Mrs Hitchcock and her long campaigns to have Wattle Day gazetted and wattle gazetted as Australia's floral emblem in the 1980s, will understand the suitability of the reference.

Terriers are known as excellent diggers (a must if your research takes place before Google searches), for their courageousness, determination and independence (a must if you have received no official support for, or recognition of, your effort, and have endless library of books to page through), and potentially noisy (a handy trait to ensure your campaign is heard above the surrounding news headlines).

There is another terrier trait which Mrs Hitchcock has demonstrated in more recent years - that she is ready to "guard" her community's best interests through her role as convenor of regional think tank, New England Visions 2030.

The author and native plant enthusiast, says the key to her successful advocacy - whether that be the conservation of Australia's native plants and the environment, or the recognition of a national Wattle Day - has been to choose a worthwhile cause, maintain a positive message, and collaborate.

"If you start something you believe in you have to keep going, and you have to have the support of other like-minded people, organisations and so on," she said.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Born in Austria, Mrs Hitchcock describes herself as a "post World War Two refugee", who arrived in Australia with her Croatian father and Romanian mother in 1950. She studied botany at university and joined the Sydney Bush Walkers group, where she met her husband, Donald, and gained an interest in, and love of, native plants.

The couple moved to Armidale in the early 1970s, where Mrs Hitchcock helped set up Armidale and District Australian Plants Society.

Fiercely protective of her home and region, Mrs Hitchcock's interest in conservation and the environment is firmly focused on the New England region and it's people.

Through New England Visions 2030, she has agitated for a break-up of the Hunter New England Local Health District - arguing it is "too large" and takes ownership "away from small communities, and treating people in smaller communities as second-class citizens".

More recently Mrs Hitchcock has advocated to ensure the New England benefits as much from renewables as the companies leading the push to establish wind and solar farms across the region.

Modelling by the Australian Energy Market Operator suggests the New England has potential to be one of the largest renewable energy zones (REZs) in the National Electricity Market, and Mrs Hitchcock, along with New England Visions 2030, is leading a push to ensure there are training opportunities in the renewable sector for locals so the region can also take advantage.

Mrs Hitchcock said the push for renewables "had to come" to Australia - it was only a matter of when.

"This is a movement happening across the world," she said. "Australia has to follow and move away from fossil fuels and coal-fired power stations."

The biggest issue with their arrival was, she said, the infrastructure required in a REZ.

"The solar farms, the wind farms and the transmission lines, and the impact this will have on the surrounding environment ... the rolling hills and grazing land," she said.

Mrs Hitchcock said the introduction of REZ infrastructure would change the face of the New England "completely", just as it is in other parts of Australia.

"It's something that's happening [across the world] but it's very hard [to accept] because people don't like change, and trying to push through these sorts of projects is difficult, particularly in a conservative area like the New England," she said.

"We're seeing a lot of angst because people are worried about the value of their properties and what they're going to be looking out on - concerned that instead of having a lovely hillside with trees and sheep grazing they're going to be looking at banks and banks of solar panels."

Mrs Hitchcock said there had been stages in history where society had gone through fairly rapid change, and she likened the arrival of the renewables sector in the New England to the invention of the motor car and the population influx along coastal communities.

"I suppose it's all part of the country progressing, but it's not always for the better," she said.

Mrs Hitchcock is critical of how the renewable sector approached its introduction into regional areas.

"I don't think the population was prepared for renewables coming in, but I don't know how you would have done it any other way except what seems to have happened," she said.

New England Visions 2030 has been dealing with renewables companies for "a few years now", Mrs Hitchcock said, having been sought out as part of the consultation process.

"Many of these companies are based overseas, which is also a bit of a sore point," she said.

"They come in, scout out the most favourable areas, consult with the land owners on an individual basis and come to agreements over payments, but the result is very mixed - some landowners are getting more for leasing their land for solar farms than other farmers.

"There doesn't seem to have been any proper coordination."

From what Mrs Hitchcock can see, and has read, she believes people who live in regional towns are also totally switched off over the REZ debate.

"They don't really care because it's not impacting them in any immediate way - the impact is on the landowners," she said.

New England Visions 2030 ran a forum on September 8, and Mrs Hitchcock estimated 80 per cent to 90 per cent of registrants were landowners.

"The rural landowners need the support of the people in the towns," she said.

"From what I can see the towns are going to benefit from many of the [REZ] windfalls ... because there will be money for infrastructure and so one, yet the people who are immediately impacted, the rural landowners, probably won't see a lot of that benefit

"That's where a lot of the friction is happening, and prompting activist groups to start up across the New England, but again the activists also need the support from people in the towns if they are to succeed."

Make sure you are signed up for our breaking news and regular newsletters