Landcare In Focus June 2010 Edition

I N PERSON, Catriona Rowntree’s voice is instantly recognisable. Clear, but slightly throaty, it resonates with anybody who has spent Thursday evenings travelling the world with Channel 9’s Getaway. In fact, meeting Ms Rowntree offscreen lives up to every... More

I N PERSON, Catriona Rowntree’s voice is instantly recognisable. Clear, but slightly throaty, it resonates with anybody who has spent Thursday evenings travelling the world with Channel 9’s Getaway. In fact, meeting Ms Rowntree offscreen lives up to every expectation set by her bubbly and effervescent television personality. While jetsetting around the globe may be her better known role, Ms Rowntree will lend her support to the National Landcare Awards in Canberra on June 24. A strange pairing? Not if you know Ms Rowntree, who has a deep affection for the land and the people who live and work on it. She grew up at Quirindi, near Tamworth in northern NSW, and returning there to deliver an Australia Day speech a few years ago she was taken aback to realise how lucky she had been to spend her formative years at such a location. “I looked out into the crowd and children were barefoot, we were surrounded by beautiful, green grass and I thought ‘this is the envy of the world’,” Ms Rown Less