Julie-Anne Davies, Lois Creek

For many Kimberley residents, Lois Creek and the 20 km of trails winding through the forest are a close-to-home retreat. One resident, Julie-Anne Davies, explains how Lois Creek has shaped her life and continues to the next generation.

“As a child, our family outings into these small woods were ‘expeditions’ into a magical, untamed frontier,” Julie-Anne explains. “I’ve had the good fortune to work and play in some incredible ‘wild spaces’, but I have to say that nothing is more central to my understanding and love for wild places as the Lois Creek woods out my back door.”

Time, perspective and logging have all changed these woods, but somehow the magic is still there - in the buttercups, the lady slippers, the momma bear and her cubs, the carpet of larch needles in the fall, the silence made from the falling snow, the smell of balsam, and the way the creek changes sound when running under ice in the winter or rising in the spring.

For Julie-Anne today, the magic is the look in her child’s eyes every time she says “let’s go take a walk in the woods”. This relatively insignificant little pocket of green space called Lois Creek has shaped the life’s of many Kimberley ‘kids’. Local green spaces are important for every community, its children and the child within us all.