OUR ADMINISTRATION

We have a dedicated team to support with our administration.

Principal Wroth Wall is a Specialist Property Lawyer who has centred his career on the formation of communities and groups owning land in common. Wroth has developed detailed precedents for the creation of property and transfers of interest.

“The thinking that guides my practice is to act in terms of the problems of particular people and places, not just crimes and cases.”

Wroth’s areas of expertise are in the areas of real property law, community title and structuring, not- for-profit and native title.

Specialty Focus Areas:

• Community Structuring

• Environmental Litigation

• Non-profit Organisations

• Property Litigation

• Community Titles / Multiple Occupancy

Michael Brennan

Wroth Wall

Michael Brennan is the Director of Clout Advisory, a firm of leading advisors in insolvency, turnaround and restructuring in Coffs Harbour and the Gold Coast.As a turnaround, restructuring, and insolvency specialist with more than 10 years of regional expertise, Michael Brennan has helped many SMEs navigate through uncertain business circumstances and guide them to lessen the effects of threats to the business over the long term.

Throughout the years of his professional practice, Michael has assisted clients in consulting, valuations, business turnarounds, risk management, corporate governance, investigating accountant appointments, and insolvency. His particular interest in these areas has allowed him to work with SMEs across different industries, including building and construction, hospitality, tourism, retail, professional services, real estate, and many more.

He is also a Chartered Accountant with a Graduate Diploma in Chartered Accounting, Advanced Certificate in Insolvency, and an Executive Certificate in Turnaround Management.

Areas of Expertise:

• Consulting

• Business Turnarounds

• Valuations

• Risk Management

• Corporate Governance

• Investigating Accountant Appointments

• Insolvency

Adam Leggett

Respected leader experienced in complex, ambiguous, and fast paced environments with track record of driving execution to deliver outcomes beyond expectation.

For more than 20 years I've been leading delivery of strategic initiatives, programs and projects for business and industry, at all levels of government, and in education and research organisations. This has refined my skills in systems analysis, strategy development, design, implementation and leading transformation.

I'm effective at strategy and transformation because of my:

• Experience across a variety of complex organisations and sectors (government, education, disability, service delivery operations, technology commercialisation, software, manufacturing, sustainability)

• Ability to quickly understand new contexts and challenges, establish credibility and trust, and set direction and collaborate with diverse people

• Lead multi-disciplinary teams to deliver new solutions

• Systems thinking, opportunity and growth mindset, and big-picture approach

• Applied capabilities in data analytics, using the power of digital technology, identifying and developing new opportunities.

• Creative and strategic problem solving abilities grounded in pragmatic practice applying variety of models and methods to deliver results

• Effective external consultancy management, training solution development, and change leadership

• Exceptional communication skills, elegant narrative development, and highly effective stakeholder consultation and management style.

I deliver results because I'm compelled to unravel tricky problems, push forwards, up, down and sideways to explore and co-create actual solutions that work so implementation progresses rapidly and real transformation occurs, while exceeding stakeholder and customer expectations.

DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC PLANNER

Dudley Leggett

FOUNDER OF SRI

Dudley qualified in Chemical Engineering from RMIT, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1962 and began employment with Esso Australia as one of a team of process engineers required to complete the startup and optimize the operation of Australia’s first petrochemical plant at Altona, Melbourne and at the age of 25 he was acting operations supervisor before resigning to travel overseas.

During four years visiting 45 countries, Dudley taught Mathematics and Social Studies for one year at the International School of Vientiane, Laos. During this time he learned to speak, read and write Laotian. During 1970 and 1971 he taught Mathematics and Science at Camberwell Grammar School, Victoria

In 1972 with his wife and first child, Dudley started the first intentional community in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW, still thriving in 2023 and home for more than fourteen households; it continues successfully and is still growing. Independent academic assessment has noted this community settlement as one of the most successful in the country.

1973/4 Dudley returned to Laos with his family to take up the position of Principal of the International School of Vientiane where he also taught Science and Social Studies and restructured the learning curriculum to an integrated and student-directed program.

On his return to Australia, together with three others in 1980 he co-wrote and had adopted the NSW State Environmental Planning Policy, SEPP 15, enabling Multiple Occupancy land settlements, Statewide. With one other he established the Sustainable Lifestyles Education Collective and obtained Federal Government funding to conduct a three-month training program for 30 long term unemployed in sustainable life skills – recognised as very successful and covered nationally on ABC-TV.

During the International Year of Peace, 1986 Dudley conceived and conducted the very successful “Peace Train”, a nine-months, 30,000 km. around Australia road show visiting schools, communities, festivals, peace organisations etc. promoting and training in peace and conflict resolution skills.

In 1987 - 1988, Dudley was Project Manager for the NSW Department of Housing’s $1.2 million pilot rural community settlement project at Wadeville, near Nimbin. In the early 90’s he was the Chairman of and drove the development, registration, and approval for Federal Government funding of the innovative Byron New School

During the late 90’s, Dudley was the Community Representative along with representatives of the NSW Department of Environment and Planning, NOREDO, the body representing Industry and Commerce, and NOROC, The Northern Rivers Organisation of Local Councils, on the committee that developed over several years, The Northern Rivers Regional Planning Strategy – Framework for a Sustainable Future.

For twelve years he was elected as President of the Suffolk Park Progress Association and served on many Byron Shire Council Advisory & Steering Committees. He was also a volunteer member and driver for the Byron Bay Rural Fire Brigade for twelve years, receiving their Long Service Medal.

Dudley has been a Justice of the Peace since 1982 and has been Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sustainability Research Institute, SRI, since he founded that body in 1997.

DIRECTOR OF FUNDRAISING

Astaria Eglington

Astaria's life work has been across many diverse sectors: sustainability, environment, invention and discovery, physics and the science of consciousness, major world problems and their solutions and across business at all levels, from running small businesses to founding and funding a high level tourism industry sector company. In addition, setting up many project- specific-organisations, and a life time of work for good causes, mostly start ups and innovating in the not-for-profit sector.

Astaria's life work has been consistently around one theme: taking on problems, usually major intractable, unsolvable problems, from the point of view of a unique perspective, embodying the essence of the quote by Albert Einstein, basically that you can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.This observation is key to how we must address the "permacrisis", the permanent state of the multiple intractable crises of the "poly-crisis" ie the "perma/poly-crisis." Old ways of thinking and solving problems simply do not work, we all know this. It is why the world's perma/polycrisis is getting worse, not better!

25 years ago, Astaria started working on three major problems facing the world, the necessity for a major systems change in the global economic structure, the requirement for a new science, particularly a new quantum physics, and the need for an effective means of achieving the global uptake of a new human-rights-respecting Economic system, based on science and technology compatible with the 21st century.

This work will be and is being launched currently because the timing is perfect, only now that the world is experiencing the intractable perma/poly-crisis, is there an opportunity to be listened to because there will be an increasing level of desperation for answers on the part of governments, industries, leaders and people. In short, Astaria's contribution to the world is decades of dedicated, consistent work on global complex systems change, resulting in a unique framework for a 21st-century solution, founded on existing science (but a new take on the theories of Network Physics), designed to meet just about everyone's needs and utilizing the fast universal uptake enabled by our current sophisticated global technologies.

Result: multitudes of intractable perma/polycrisis problems will get solved in one surprisingly easy way.

To envision the reality of this, think for a moment of the chaos that would have happened to the world's postal service if we hadn't had the invention of the internet and email, especially now that we have over 7 billion people on Earth and 347 billion emails get sent a day! New systems are extraordinarily effective at preempting, mitigating, or solving multiple problems.

Astaria has worked on a unique complex systems solution, similar to the internet, with in-built applications like email, that is designed for universal uptake and multiple problem-solving. In short, it fulfils Einsteins' requirement for a true solution to an intractable problem.

Environmental start-ups:

Launching and leading the campaign to save the forest in the Heaphy Track area of the South Island of New Zealand. 3 years of hard work ensured that the petition to save it was successful and now the area is fully protected, it's The Kahurangi National Park.

Employed by the Commission for the Environment, Wellington, NZ as one of two young research assistants. Went to London, UK, in the late 1970s, to help Friends of the Earth get established. It's come a long way since then!...
and much much more in environmental causes.

Business:

Receptionist, salesperson, etc until she decided to run a few well-timed businesses, that funded decades of unpaid work for good causes; these were mostly fashion and lifestyle businesses, that supported living in four different countries over many years. This was a great practical experience in risk-taking, writing business and investment plans, and mastering business challenges.

Australian Tourism Industry: New Investment in the Construction Sector:

Astaria wrote a new blueprint and investment equation to solve an intractable problem facing the global tourism industry: the reluctance, in the 1990s, of investors to fund the new build of hotels, resorts, theme parks, etc because they had all lost so much money, even though the Tourism Industry was the fastest growing industry in the world. Astaria's blueprint opened up the sector to a new potential $15 billion build and she built a company for this purpose in conjunction with the world's leading multinational companies in architecture, tourism, finance, construction, investment, etc including leading Australian companies in these sectors.

Experience in assembling a world-class team, project management, feasibility and investment documentation, and presentation and sales to the CEOs of some of the world's leading multinationals in tourism, construction, entertainment, etc, including to the heads of Investment of the main Wall Street banks, major US pension funds, etc.

Extra-curricular:

Astaria is an inventor and writer and secured patents on an invention (in the 1990s) Astaria has been writing an epic, like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings but a 21st century version, that has dozens of characters and stories on the theme of how we all ultimately pull together to save our world. It is intended to act as a very uplifting, inspiring co-creating, co-manifesting venture, to unite us all in real-time, while we navigate the difficult, challenging decade ahead and in the process, introduce the new systems, structures, and lifestyles we will need to bring in, that will ensure a planet that has been cleaned up, nourished and regenerated and human social and economic systems that our children grandchildren and future generations will enjoy in the 21st century.

Lydia Kindred

After travelling through Europe and Morocco when young, Lydia worked at the ABC in Sydney and Adelaide, film editing for 9 years. She began her commitment to pursuing sustainability in all its forms by editing short films with environmentally and socially conscious themes.

After travelling throughout Australia, Indonesia and Thailand at the end of the 1980’s Lydia moved from Adelaide to the Northern Rivers, where she wanted to establish a learning community.

Lydia: presented the ‘Earth Friendly Show’ for 2 years in the early days of Byron Bay’s radio station, Bay FM, focussing on sustainability for the environment and the local community.

Lydia, with Dudley Leggett and others, registered the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) in 1997.

Lydia created ‘The Vision’, an expanded brochure to propose a low key eco-friendly future for Byron Shire. This visual promotion of the vision of a sustainable future was distributed to everyone in Byron Bay and consequently affected decisions by Byron Shire councillors as locals were asked to contact their councillors in support of this vision for a more sustainable future for Byron Shire.

In 1993 Lydia co-created ‘The Big Picture Show’ which was held at the Epicentre at Belongil, Byron Bay, with 2,000 attending. Focussing on the ‘Big Picture’ for the future of Byron Shire, which was being threatened with rampant Gold Coast style development at the time, speakers included the Mayor, councillors, Dudley Leggett (for SRI) gave talks on creating a more resilient and sustainable future for the local region. All attending were invited to join workshops and give feedback so that their ideas could be shared, and this influenced future decision making by Byron Shire Council.

Lydia co-created a TV advertisement to help save the forests and have 16 National Parks created in NSW by supporting the election of Bob Carr’s Labor government. It was very instrumental in their subsequent election. The ad was screened throughout the whole north of the state for 2 weeks and the election of the Labor government, which did create the 16 promised National Parks. It was won in some seats only ‘by a busload of votes’, and we know our campaign had convinced a lot of people.

Lydia has been a Director of the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) since 1997, working towards establishing intentional communities where community members learn about and educate visitors about living more sustainably, as the prime focus for the community. There are many people we know and have worked with who will support this vision and have the varied skills and knowledge needed to live and work co-operatively together for the desired sustainability learning outcomes.

Lydia edited the Byron hinterland newspaper ‘The Village Journal’: herself for 3 years, and with husband Garth Kindred, who has since passed away, for another 11 years: always a work of art and always targeting articles and information related to living more sustainably! Many articles have been included over the years about the Sustainability Research Institute in the pages of the Village Journal

Co-ordinated the Communities Hub Art Space, a gallery, healing and meeting space in Lismore, where many SRI meetings have been conducted over 7 years: it was sadly flooded in February 2022.

Lydia has been a director and secretary of Northern Rivers Rail Ltd, since 2020: working to extend solar train services from Byron Bay to the rest of the Northern Rivers line. This is greatly needed for the future sustainability of our whole region, and to combat climate change. SRI is a partner in this.