In this episode, we have a delightful chat with Rebecca Steenholdt, the Economic Development Coordinator at East Gippsland Shire. Rebecca shares her journey from growing up in small East Gippsland schools to pursuing a career in fashion and eventually finding her way back to the region. We learn about her experiences, passions, and the diverse pathways that led her to her current role in economic development.
In this episode, we have a delightful chat with Rebecca Steenholdt, the Economic Development Coordinator at East Gippsland Shire. Rebecca shares her journey from growing up in small East Gippsland schools to pursuing a career in fashion and eventually finding her way back to the region. We learn about her experiences, passions, and the diverse pathways that led her to her current role in economic development.
Welcome to the Rural Venture Collective podcast, the show that celebrates the strength, innovation and resilience of women across East Gippsland. Whether you're a local resident or someone curious about the unique spirit of East Gippsland, this podcast is for you. Together, we'll explore the triumphs, the lessons learned and the dreams that fuel these East Gippsland women. Through this podcast, we'll dive into the heart of East Gippsland and shine a spotlight on the incredible women who are shaping business, creating art, nurturing the land and fostering connections across this vast region. Get ready to be inspired, to learn and to be a part of a collection that celebrates the shared experiences that make East Gippsland more than just a place but a home. So grab a cup of your favourite local brew, find a cosy spot and tune in as we embark on a journey of connection and discovery together. I'd like to acknowledge the Gunai-Kurnai people as the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and future. Good morning and welcome back to the Rural Venture Collective.
Speaker 1:This morning we are delighted to be having a fabulous chat with the lovely Rebecca Steenholt. Rebecca is a local lady. She's working at the East Keepsland Shire and as the economic development coordinator, and she's a delight to behold. So welcome, hi, liz. Thank you for having me. Well, thanks for coming on into this fabulous James Yates podcast studio. How cool is this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, quite the space.
Speaker 1:It really is. They know what they're doing over here. Rebecca, can I call you?
Speaker 2:back. You can call me back, just not Becky.
Speaker 1:Not Becky. You don't like that one.
Speaker 2:Look, I should be in like a middle American trailer pass.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll take note of that. Rebecca, you grew up locally, you moved away for a time and now you're back doing fabulous things in the economic development space, and you know, I know that first hand. Tell me a little bit about growing up in East Keepsland.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, you're right. I grew up here, I went to the Southfield Primary School and when I attended in the early 90s that's shown my age there were 15 kids in the school. Recall it with absolute fondness. You know the size and what sort of values and community I guess by that gave me. And I think Kenneth closed all the consolidated, all the schools in the early 90s and so we had to move from the Southfield Primary School to the Nicholson Primary School.
Speaker 1:The big smoke.
Speaker 2:45 people, oh, this is huge, what a dramatic change. So I think that really made me value the importance of retaining our little small towns across East Keepsland. And I went from those really small schools to a huge all-girls school, you know, in metropolitan, actually Wondrepenshala in Melbourne and what a contrast. But I'm so, so glad that I had those foundational years that had that essence of community which I now, I guess, have the pleasure of trying to support in the work that I do.
Speaker 1:Wow, so an all-girls school. I mean, that's an experience. I went to an all-girls school and I remember, at the end of grade six, being really excited about going to an all-girls school because you know, boys are the naughty ones, right? No? And then you get to an all-girls school and you go wow, boys had nothing on this Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I found it really terrifying. I think I'm still scarred by going to an all-girls school and I have three younger brothers, so boys just seem like so much easier to deal with. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I hear you. So school Mawnington, peninsula, and there were two from there. Well, I have.
Speaker 2:I guess, the opportunity. My parents divorced when I was quite young, so my dad was based up in northern New South Wales and so I did a year of co-education ootaboo on the Gold Coast, and then I went to boarding school in Brisbane after that and I came back to finish my year 11 and 12 at track college in Manila, the all-girls scary school that we talked about earlier. So, yeah, a really interesting educational pathway.
Speaker 1:And when you were a school girl down the Mawnington Peninsula and you're thinking you know the world's your oyster. You've got this fabulous grounding growing up in country schools in East Gippsland. You've been secondary school down there. You've had a stint on the Gold Coast. What are you thinking? Where is where's Bex life?
Speaker 2:looking at heading from that point, well, the funny thing is I was fashion obsessed so I grew up with a mother who loved country style and bog and they were these sort of just, I guess, image rich sort of inspiration that I devoured as a teenage girl, and my mother had a lot to do with the Melbourne Fashion Festival when I was in my sort of formative teenage years.
Speaker 1:So, becky, your mum was involved in the Melbourne Fashion Festival. Were you ever involved?
Speaker 2:No, I was never professionally involved, just attended. But one funny thing I will tell you. So I've got three generations of females here in East Gippsland, and in the early 90s my nana, my mum and I were all models in Eileen Doddles, which is a store in Bernstale, at the Fashion Parade here. Oh, we've been circa maybe 94. Right, so multi-generational East Gippsland models.
Speaker 1:Wow, what's this space? What's this space?
Speaker 2:And so I had these grandiose ideas of becoming a fashion designer and it's really funny because this is, I'm so glad it was pre-internet. But I had a very tiny little fashion label called Beck for Beck towards the end of my schooling years and back in those days VCA you could do textiles at school. So I did that in partnership with my own little squiggles and designs, and so as soon as I could leave school I was straight out of school and and trying to sell my wares in in Peran or the Grewy little spots in Melbourne. And then I went and did fashion business, merchandising and marketing at the Melbourne School of Fashion. So I was happy, big Gucci, fabulous.
Speaker 1:So tell me about back for back. What sort of artems would we look at there? What could we buy if we were looking at buying something in your label?
Speaker 2:Well, it would have been circa 2000,. So a lot of off the shoulder, remember, like, remember Britney Spears and Christina's, like the low hipster 80s inspired sort of bleach and denim played a big role here. Nice, yeah, really 80s inspired stuff. We did some puff paints and playing around with textures and tulle and I was very not ashamed, but it's part of the way I'm texting the city as a show, but it's about my era. So all of those Sarah Jessica Parker, off the shoulder, big, quite dramatic things for things I like to play around with, all back in vogue now, absolutely. Well, that's what it is. You know, fashion cyclical, there's always a trend that was fired by something that was before.
Speaker 1:That's right, and so you're going to have to dust off that label, gosh, no, so we're sitting in East Gippsland and I'm referring to you as Bec Noguchi, so tell me a little bit about what brought you to this place.
Speaker 2:I came back to East Gippsland about six years ago and I was actually working in e-commerce and logistics and operations for a fashion label in Byron Bayable Places and it was just when Instagram was really getting it stride so that e-commerce pathway was just booming. So good timing. There I had a family member who was selling a big farm and had a big bullshed that needed some help packing up. So I took two weeks off and said I'll come down and help you pack up, as my mum. And after two weeks I was like, oh, it's pretty bloody good here and I guess where I was in Byron Bay that sense of community had really dissipated. You know, we see a lot of those places really going through that gentrified change now. It wasn't somewhere that I felt really aligned with my, my fibre, my morals. So I came back to East Gippsland and there was no booming e-commerce fashion industry in Benz del East. You can believe it, you could have dusted off.
Speaker 1:Bec for Bec. I don't know what you were thinking.
Speaker 2:So many possibilities and because, as I mentioned previously, I've always had an interest in involvement with hospitality. So Tanya and Anton out at the Long Paddock were looking for a menu manager, so I approached them and that was a really good fit. It was such an incredible way to get to know community, get to know local producers and get to connect to the grassroots level with East Gippsland again, and I think that gave me a really good insight into industry and then the socioeconomic landscape of East Gippsland and from that I was then able to work with a lot of local producers and businesses like Put in the Sun Sales, grave Sardine. And then I sort of emerged into event coordination and, as is the way with lots of COVID stories, I was the very first event coordinator for East Gippsland Winter Festival. I think we were two months in and then Adam Blom and I had just got word that David Walsh of Dark Mofo was cancelling Dark Mofo that year and we made the decision that we as well would be cancelling the East Gippsland Winter Festival for that year and at the exact same time. So this was the sort of fed March of 2020.
Speaker 2:So we'd just gone through the hideous Black Summer fires which impacted all of us here in East Gippsland I had family property that was severely impacted and state government was standing up a brand new organization called Bush Fire Recovery Victoria, and they identified a lot of transferable skills in my checkered professional past, which then yet transferred into me being a services coordinator to support the district of Bucking on their community recovery journey, which I was absolutely honoured to be able to be involved in, and then I guess, from that that really spring boarded me into working within government systems and using, as I said, all of my skills previously to transfer into that. So the organic pathway from community recovery into community development with local government, to then economic development. I've argued this a lot, that community development and economic development they have to live together, they have to exist through hand in glove because they're one and the same. If you don't have a thriving economy then you're not going to have a surviving community, and that's how we got here.
Speaker 1:I mean that's great. And it's interesting that everything you do, even designing tulle skirts that should be seen on the streets of New York I'm not going to look that down, am I?
Speaker 1:You are not, but everything feeds into the next thing, doesn't it? So everything that we do, we take skills from that the feed into the next thing. And I noticed that you said you referred to a check and passed, and I'm assuming that's a hound's truth check. That's right. Well, I know you've done a lot of work with Bucking and with Bruthen in particular, and I know that I've worked with a lot of businesses up there that speak very highly of the shire's involvement at that grassroot level, and I think that this is a great direction and we're lucky to have a shire that is such a huge shire. You know it's an organisation that manages a really huge area but does have that contact with people at the grassroots level.
Speaker 2:It's a real opportunity Local government is, you know, the one of the three tiers of government that can be involved and understand the context and the needs more than any other, and I think there's real opportunity to change the narrative that local government can be a deeply rewarding and creative industry or, you know, job to have, and I would love to do a campaign for Come and Work Free, skip Sunshine Council, because it's deeply rewarding.
Speaker 1:It's amazing and listening to you talk about these skills and your passion and the path you've taken to get here. All of these attributes, of course, feed into the job that you're doing every day, which is packaging up and marketing eSkips land and helping businesses to be the best that they can be and see their future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting. If anyone had said to me 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you're going to be working for local government in economic development, I would have said fully. I don't think I would have foreseen the pathway. But retrospectively I can really see that because of all the diversity, industry exposure and working for small businesses, grassroots businesses and even some big national organizations, I really have a great understanding of commercial landscapes and the business support needed. But then, because of my pride for eSkips land that I'm used to promote but also protect, eskips land is, surprisingly to myself, quite well equipped to do that, if that's not too eager to say.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, absolutely. I think you're being completely honest, and we do have a lot to protect in eSkips land. You know we have the natural beauty. We're now we have an eco accreditation. We do we're the first region in Victoria to gain that accreditation, which is pretty big right. It's huge, it's huge. So what do you like to do when you're out and about in eSkips land? What draws your attention? What's what sort of area? You know it's quite diverse. We have everything here, don't we? We have the mountains and we have the sea, and we have the lakes and we have all these fabulous natural habitats. What do you like to do?
Speaker 2:Well, it's well for choice, so I love to get out and just go for a walk in nature. I live out in Lindemoe, which is quite close to the Mitchell River, so the Mitchell River National Park is beautiful and there's some great secret little swimming holes that I like to frequent in the warmer months. But then, contrasting that, we go up to the high country north of Bucking and that is just so isolated and I really like to have what I call no contact time, so go somewhere where my phone doesn't work so I can just be in nature and we've got so much rare endangered flora and fauna in some of those parts, so witnessing that is something that I always I never take for granted, but it's on, you know, on my back door.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You know what I like. I like the fact that when you're driving around, it depends on the season as to what animals you come across Like. There's a certain time of the year when every time you're out in the highway, you're seeing a kidnap.
Speaker 2:They're my favorite animal, the echidna Right. Their Latin name is tachyglosses aculitis. So back to my partner. As a conservationist, you can't have a favorite animal and not know its Latin derivative. So there you go, Well well, that's not really committed.
Speaker 1:Do you have the echidnas on your property?
Speaker 2:No, we don't. So our block in Mindanao is quite urban, and then we've got property up in W Tree and I'm yet to see an echidna. I look forward to that day, but I do. There's one on my my commute to work that I see, and I always feel like it's a good omen if I see an echidna. It's going to be a good day.
Speaker 1:Look, I've got to say that my favorite local animals are hog deer, and I don't know its Latin name, but I just, you know, I just love to catch one cutletch and let it go. One of the other things that we're really lucky to have locally and in Becky and I both foodies, some amazing Hospitality venues and we can get some amazing food and locally produced wines and beers and Honeys and gin. Have you got some favorite hangouts? So?
Speaker 2:by dangerous geographical proximity, very close to lightfoot wine. So, they've been yet is Terra Rosa, over limestone, so that lends itself to beautiful Minerality in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. So if you haven't been, go up to their gorgeous, gorgeous viewpoint which looks out over into their planes. The staff gorgeous, the produce is fantastic. They're a little tasting board. I think it displays a couple of the other hospitality offerings in Skip's land, so Northern Ground, sardine and Long Paddock, so three really high quality hospitality venues that we would showcase our local produce, in fact Hatted.
Speaker 1:So sad things that had to be so lucky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a mad foodie, so we're very, very proud to have their sardine Long Paddock, northern Ground. If wines, not your thing sales grave brewery down in all. Boss, I'm doing a fantastic thing there. They're branding is something that I just think is a beautiful representation of seeing a micro brewery become regionally such a good representation of Quality produce, but also how you can tell a story and we see their brand in some of the highest quality venues across Australia and a brand new, best bespoke location, custom built, set up as well, at Sailors Grave.
Speaker 2:That's right. So between Marlowe and Cape Conran yeah, beautiful site, one of my favorite beaches down at Cape Conran. So they'll be setting up, do you in town there, which I think will also diversify their offering to grow their own botanicals great and then put back into their BSO.
Speaker 1:We're super lucky and they're so passionate. You know the owners of sales grave and we're so lucky. You know Even Tambo honey. You know the owners at Tambo honey. I just so passionate about what they do, but I love their collaboration that's going on collaboration is key. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You can play buzzword bingo when you work for local government, and my team laughs at me when I do that. The collaboration is the only way that a lot of regional brands are gonna succeed. So I'm all about working together across multiple industries, across multiple tiers of government. Yeah, it's the only way for us to really get ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and if you go to places like the meet-on hot springs, you'll find that you can pick up a whole heap of Craft bits and pieces that are made by local addisons as well. So I agree, collaboration is the way forward and it's the best way to cross promote what you're doing and and both these Skipland Shire and EGMI can assist with that and and are keen to help people collaborate. Beck, it has been a delight to have you in today. Thank you so much for coming in and telling us a little bit about your eSkipland, how you ended up again, how you ended back here, your life here and why you love it so much. Thank you, it's been an absolute joy.
Speaker 2:I hope we can inspire more women who skip time to tell their story and also entice other people to move you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Beck Sainthal, thanks for being in here today. Thanks, liz. Well, that's us for today. Thanks for joining us on the rural venture collective. Remember to like and subscribe so you'll be updated when our next podcast lands. Most importantly, stay connected and get out there and enjoy our beautiful eSkipland Bye. This podcast is brought to you by eSkipland marketing with the support of the Victorian government, recorded at the James Yates studio, benstone.