Parking Reformer Spotlight: Wendy Nash

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’ve lived in a lot of places and what I learned the hard way is that systems and relationships matter more than postcode.

During my early childhood, I grew up in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and in my early teens, we moved to a well-to-do area in Sydney. At 15 years old, I lived in Uppsala, Sweden, for a year on a student exchange. Then I moved to a very aspirational area of Sydney with views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Although for many, such a life would be utopian, I was deeply unhappy.

In my early 20s I moved to London for 5 years where I did admin and met a French fella. We lived outside Paris for a couple of years where I worked for the European HQ for a company in Paris I’d never heard of called Microsoft (which shows how long ago it was). My fella and I came back to Sydney where everything fell apart. That period forced me to take a good hard look at myself: why I was never happy wherever I lived, what I was doing, and who I was with.

The result was studying a psychotherapy diploma, a psychology degree, and a couple of mindfulness diplomas. During that time, I met a nuclear physicist who could only get a job in Oxford so I ended up working in admin at Oxford University (which meant having way too many dull conversations about the weather which lost its appeal pretty quickly). I moved back to Sydney a year before Covid. My current partner was in his late 50s and could only get a permanent job interstate so that’s how we ended up in Caboolture, Queensland.

All of this means I come to transport advocacy less as a technician and more as someone trained to learn about fear, resistance, power, belonging and being wrong. What’s been really helpful with all this travelling, experiencing, and calamities is that I have much more compassion and kindness for people who find themselves unsettled by their circumstances. Learning how to get on with people from different backgrounds and finding ways to connect with anyone anywhere about anything has been central to the advocacy work.

The people who inspire me most are the Dalai Lama, who focuses on kindness and love for everyone (even those who caused him and his folk such pain); this video with Bryan Stevenson and the phrase “hatred never stops hatred, only love stops hatred” which reminds me to train to keep my heart open to everyone no matter what happens (which isn’t always easy in advocacy-land).

How did you discover parking reform?

It popped up on my feed several times before I thought to check it out. I couldn’t figure out why parking reform had anything to do with better active and public transport. When it kept appearing, I figured it was time I actually paid attention and discovered this amazingly supportive and fun community who have tons of great resources and webinars (at 4am my time!).

How did you get around to creating Get Around Caboolture?

Basically, I was dumbfounded that the people who are most vulnerable in the community were so forgotten in the transport system. It’s kids getting to a part-time job, people on a low income seeking employment, people with disabilities travelling to medical appointments, and seniors who’ve aged out of driving.

This came sharply into focus when we moved here and I caught the bus from a central area in Caboolture to the local shopping centre. It was 12 minutes by car and a ridiculous 40 minutes by bus, not including the wait time so I basically swore in my mind for 35 minutes during the trip and haven’t really stopped swearing about it since.

At the time, I read the book Movement by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet. No-one else had a group focused on active or public transport in Caboolture, so I figured that since no-one was doing anything, well, anything I did was likely to be a step in the right direction.

And luckily, I was an unemployed middle-aged woman who no-one would offer a job to which made me realise there’s real untapped potential in harnessing the skills of people who have life experience and time on their hands.

What do you feel most proud of with your advocacy work?

When I tell locals what I’m working on, they’re relieved and delighted that someone is taking action. When I talk to transport professionals at any level, they’re genuinely impressed by the level of engagement and determination we have.

I’ve signed up to lots of committees, which means the problem of transport in the outer suburbs is being discussed. I’ve had a meeting with the state transport planner about the problem, which I gather is as rare as hens’ teeth. As a result, a transport survey is now underway (it’s about a year between the initial meeting and the survey collection point). It’s surprising how open people are to hearing about it. One transport officer in another council told me he wished he had a group like us advocating for the community.

I started with a Facebook community group to connect with locals, a LinkedIn page to connect with professionals, the cheapest flyers I could get printed, and a t-shirt to wear at every event. It’s been over 3 years and we’re just about to become a not-for-profit. That feels slightly daunting but I’m really pleased we’ve come this far.

What advice would you give to others working on parking reform or grassroots urbanist advocacy more broadly?

It’s a long game. Tony Jordan said it took 15 years for the parking reform movement to really take off. You get nothing for ages, then something, then if all the stars are aligned it can fall over quickly.

Look for laughter, joy, and fun stuff or you’ll go mad with it all. I also hand-weed the lawn which gives me an opportunity to connect with the few people walking by, but mostly it’s like advocacy; you’re pulling out one weed at a time then going back and doing it again, and eventually you realise the place is pretty much cleared and there are gaps in the grass where something new can grow.

Don’t worry too much about connecting with other people. People will find you eventually. I’ve been delighted to discover a number of super-talented people around me who work in transport and are only too pleased to find a place where something good is happening.

Fostering relationships with the people around you is the single most important part of advocacy. Even with a background in psychology, I’ve been surprised by just how central relationships are to this work. You can’t do any of this well unless you have high-quality relationships that are supportive and kind. It took ages to learn to let a lot of things slide and one thing I just realised is that I too often want to make people wrong (oops!).

What’s a parking question you wish there was a study or research paper about?

How to build relationships in transport advocacy to effect change: the political, emotional, psychological, and messaging landscape that’s central to creating change using contemporary tools. We don’t need more studies on what needs to be done. What we need is to understand how to do it, and that’s political. And political really means relational: with politicians, yes, but even more so with the general community.