Australia Day Honours awarded to passionate rural Queenslanders

Tibby Dixon

Laurence 'Tibby' Dixon has dedicated more than half his lifetime to the lychee industry and his passion for the fruit is still as strong as ever.

The Sarina grower from Rainbow Orchard was honoured on Australia Day for his service to the horticulture industry including a stint as the president of the Australian Lychee Growers Association in which he helped implement the national levy.

"I think about it now and go, maybe all those years of effort you put in were worth it; it is very rewarding," he said.

"To me, my greatest achievement while president was the instigating of the national levy.

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"That took a few years and with our secretary, vice president and treasurer, we worked for nearly two and half years continually to get it up and running.

"Without a levy you can't do research and development and you can't do promotion. Now that it is up and running we have programs with the Department of Primary Industries and we do promotional work right through Australia.

"The main aim of all that stuff for lychees is export and we have get a lot of new export going into America right now and that market is expanding more and doubling each year."

It was 1978 when Mr Dixon bought a small acreage and decided to become the "third or fourth commercial grower in Australia" to plant lychees.

It quickly grew from a few hundred trees to 7000 at one stage.

"I just got involved in the industry and became the CQ delegate and vice president of the lychee industry for a couple of years and then president for six years," he said.

"From there I realised we needed new cultivars so I was doing a lot of trips overseas anyway and I looked at new cultivars and new varieties because we just had the basic ones here.

"I found a way to import new varieties and then of course 10 or 15 years later got all these new varieties out to growers.

"Some of the new varieties I've got, they bare early and start commercial production at three years and that's what growers want. There is an increase of tonnes per hectare, two or three more times than the old varieties were doing."

In 2020, Mr Dixon made headlines when he successfully harvested fruit from the country's first seedless lychee tree.

He had selectively bred the lychee for two decades from a tree he imported from overseas.

But Mr Dixon said it isn't without its challenges still.

"It is like seedless watermelon, it is a very pedantic and not something that is easy," he said.

"Lychees are easy to grow but because every now and again if it is in an orchard with other cultivars, some can suddenly have seeds in them.

"This year we had 13 new seedling cross pollinated plants and of them, two takes look promising but it takes another three to four years before commercial production.

"They've got to be consistent and we want four crops out of every five years."

Mr Dixon was actually oblivious to the news of his Australia Day honour for quite some time.

"I just got back from a month in Norway and they've been trying to get us and we've been out in the Arctic Circle for three weeks so everybody has been trying to get us [on the phone]," he said.

"I have to thank my family for supporting me throughout. It's one of those things I never expected and I didn't go out to try and achieve that but I try and help the lychee industry."

As he approaches 74 and with three academic children who don't want to take on the property, Mr Dixon sold 95 per cent of his orchard to new and young growers.

But he hasn't given away everything just yet.

"I've got a few breeding trees (1000 trees on 13 acres left) that we use at present for propagation material," he said.

"I'll probably, in the next few years, downsize all together.

"It's been very good to me; the lychee industry.

"Hopefully in the future the Australia export directly into China grows...it's still a sunrise industry. The people we have in all departments and people that are running the industry...have done a fantastic job and honestly it is an industry a lot of people look at and go, 'oh wow, they have come a long way in the last 25 years'."

Ken Timms

Managing the amalgamation of two shires who fought each other on the footy field and most other places was by far the biggest challenge for Ken Timms, who has been awarded a Public Service Medal for outstanding service to rural and remote Queensland communities in the 2023 Australia Day honours.

Mr Timms has had a distinguished career across many decades, being in the role of chief executive officer for 20 of the 41 years he's spent in local government in Queensland, working for Bungil, Murilla, Cloncurry, Tambo, Kilcoy, Blackall-Tambo, Murweh and now the Etheridge Shire Council.

According to the citation, he has bought a structured style of leadership to the position of CEO while also promoting opportunities for local communities to grow and broaden their horizons with his experience and knowledge across all layers of local government.

"The professionalism that emanates from his office provides confidence and assurance on a local level, resulting in positive outcomes for those who are a part of his team," it says.

"He is widely recognised by his peers as someone who has dedicated his professional life to serving regional areas, with a strong commitment to the communities where he works and lives.

"Mr Timms operates under a very high set of values, which he upholds strongly and encourages others to do likewise."

He started, in his words, at the "bottom of the pile" as a cost clerk on road projects for the Bungil Shire Council, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council, and worked his way through the ranks.

"Amalgamation was definitely my biggest challenge," he said. "Wherever you went, the community didn't want it. In my case, at Blackall-Tambo, I had to bring two communities together that had fought each other for decades on the footy field and elsewhere."

Ironically, it was while he was there that he had one of his big successes, convincing the state government that the local council workforce could deliver a huge $30 million flood damage reparation project, when it was common to outsource the work.

"We proved that the council was value for money," Mr Timms said, adding that his other big challenge has been in trying to maintain financial viability for councils in regional and remote Queensland, and at the same time keep updating systems and introducing fresh ideas.

For example, in Georgetown at the moment, the region is going through a lot of growth thanks to renewable energy and mine reinvigoration, providing challenges that the council has to meet with a small workforce.

Mr Timms said that joining community groups was how he connected to community needs but when he arrived in Georgetown, the local rural fire brigade was down to one member and the need for more was obvious.

He also took on the presidency of the Australian Livestock Marketing Association for a number of years.

"It's always been about making a positive difference in the communities that you work with, and I certainly didn't do it all by myself - I've been helped greatly by my staff," he said.

He regards an important part of his job now to pass on his knowledge to up-and-coming staff.