Where Purpose Meets Process — Dr Julie Mulhauser on Sustainability, Public Good and Community Leadership

In this episode of the Rotary and Community Service Radio Show, Lili-Ann talks with Dr Julie Mulhauser — retired medical specialist, newly inaugurated President of the Balwyn Rotary Club, President of East Sider News, co-founder of the Friends of Belmont Park, and a volunteer with the Lighter Footprints Organisation.

Julie is one of Melbourne's eastern suburbs' most dedicated community advocates, with a focus on environmental sustainability and civic engagement. She brings to everything she does a rare combination of strategic thinking, professional discipline and genuine passion for public good.

In this conversation, Julie shares her thinking on two big themes: how sustainability action actually takes root in communities, and the tools and processes that make projects work. There is a great deal of practical wisdom here for anyone involved in community action at any scale.

Press play — the gold is in the listening.

🎙️ Hosted by Lili-Ann Kriegler
 📻 Rotary and Community Service Radio Show — 94.1 FM 3WBC
 🌿 Recorded 3 July 2026

#Rotary #BalwynRotary #CommunityRadio #Sustainability #NatureStrips #ElectrifyBoroondara #Boroondara #MelbourneCommunity #ClimateAction #CommunityAdvocacy #PublicGood #VolunteerLeadership #ProjectManagement #Melbourne #LighterFootprints #FriendsOfBelmontPark #EastSiderNews

Transcript

Rotary and Community Radio Show — 94.1 FM 3WBC Interview with Dr Julie Mulhauser 3 July 2026

Lili-Ann: Good evening and welcome everyone to the Rotary and Community Radio Show, 94.1 FM 3WBC. You're with Lili-Ann this evening and I am really excited to interview Dr Julie Mulhauser, who has just been inducted as the President of the Balwyn Rotary Club, and we're going to hear about the many hats that she wears. Julie is a retired medical specialist and active community advocate based in Canterbury. Since retiring from medicine, she's become a highly active community advocate and community volunteer in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, focusing on environmental sustainability, First Nations advocacy and planning. She's President of East Sider News, co-founder of the Friends of Belmont Park, and a volunteer for the Lighter Footprints Organisation. Hello, Julie.

Julie: Oh, hi, Lili-Ann. Really glad to be here.

Lili-Ann: Yes, I'm so looking forward to talking to you about your work so that our listeners can hear about what you do and why you do it. So to start us off, you've told me that you've been volunteering since you were a child and you're still doing it now. If you had to explain just in one or two sentences, what would you say is the purpose behind your work?

Julie: I've always been interested in public good and I'm now in the privileged position as someone who's retired to have the time to do this full-time instead of working. And seeing as I've been doing this now for a few years, there's been a lot that I've learned along that journey that's important to increasing my impact and a sense of satisfaction. But I also feel like I can help support others doing a similar role and we get to share and support each other.

Lili-Ann: Yeah, I definitely get that you're great at working with other people, as you've just said. And you're very well known for your work on nature strips and on landscape care and greening pathways. You've told me all this in our conversations, and it's intrigued me. We've mentioned also Belmont Park, and you're also interested in home electrification and energy efficiency, among others. So I have two questions about this. Why are these projects so important to you? And the second is, what is the connection between all of them?

Julie: The thing that connects these activities is that they're small and practical and actionable. So they act at a very personal scale. And at a very personal scale, the positive impact isn't big. But it's one of those things that if enough of us do these small acts of care, then it adds up to a bigger effect. But there's also a whole lot of other benefits from acting like this. And one of the important things that I've learned is that a lot of people have a good intention to do these small acts of care. And it's a really common challenge to not know where to start. It's unfamiliar and basically just getting underway is difficult. And that's where something called peer-to-peer sharing of information is really, really important because it helps build that confidence to take these steps. It doesn't substitute for someone who's an expert in the field, but they're really good ways to build people's confidence, to move them past the "this is something I'd like to do, and I always intend to do" to thinking "actually, you know, it's something I'm doing now." And the other thing about these small acts of care that add up to a bigger collective impact is that the more people do it, the more normal these acts of care become. And the more people who are doing it, particularly if it's visible, the more it turns into this positive virtuous cycle where people are more inclined to join in. But it also has an impact on decision makers, where they see a lot of support in the community for the issues that these acts of care are working towards. And because they're small, because they can aggregate, they have that scaling aspect. It's a process rather than a product, so it transfers very, very well. But another really important attribute — because the issues we're trying to solve with these acts of care are really complex, serious and durable issues — is keeping hope alive and empowering people, because it requires a marathon rather than a sprint. And so keeping people's energy up and keeping it positive is another really important attribute.

Lili-Ann: Those are all such great points about how these individual projects inspire and build confidence in people and allow them to become involved so that things actually happen. Between that and all of the other projects — and you've done your own nature strip, haven't you? — so between that and all of the other projects, which are the sustainability issues that are actually being addressed when you get dressed and go and work in these particular projects?

Julie: Yeah, so that's a really great question. So say, for instance, the nature strips transformation — it's a really visible transformation in what's public realm, even though it's a private owner that's making these changes. It's a public realm change. So it's a highly feasible transformation. But the public realm also has this huge benefit that you make connections. So if you are gardening on your nature strip, particularly if you're digging your nature strip up like I did during the pandemic, sitting on your bottom with a garden trowel, you will get people coming up and chatting to you. And in that process, you will meet your neighbours, you will meet other people, and they will ask, like you did, what are you doing? And then you explain what you're doing and why you're doing it. So it has that very public social effect, which is really good for giving people confidence to act also — not just discussing these serious issues, but also that social cohesion, social connection and demonstration of care in the public domain. They're all really positive attributes. So from what seems like quite a small thing, the potential for a much bigger ripple effect. And speaking to other communities around Australia, the process is a bit different from community to community. Not all councils are supportive. They often have concerns about safety. But the process has been going along in Boroondara for about 15 years. So there's a lot of confidence from the council. And that's one of the other important attributes — it's a multi-stakeholder project. And that leads to these building of connections. So for Balwyn Rotary, the biodiversity team at Boroondara Council has been a really important connection and support. And that's built the basis for these other opportunities, such as the Friends of Belmont Park. And I'm on a community advisory group to council on tree canopy and biodiversity. It's not just that act. The value is in the process.

Lili-Ann: Yes, it's interesting because I think when we hear about planting gardens or looking after gardens, we're all very aware of the environmental dimension of sustainability — like it's good for the bees and the insects and the plants and the animals and collecting water and all of those things. But what you're describing are really other dimensions, like the social and community and governance — all the other dimensions that are often quite invisible to people in what you're doing every day.

Julie: A really interesting way to describe this is what's called a civic ecosystem. And so it's the same thinking that you might apply in the natural environment, because of course this also exists in a natural ecosystem and the processes that you referred to are also true. But there is this civic ecosystem, and it's the same thing where you're trying to build connections, strengthen, and make the system resilient. And it also provides a model for identifying collaborations, like where you could actually support an element of this system to strengthen it for greater public good.

Lili-Ann: I know you love systems and frameworks. I want to step back for a minute because in our conversation, I was intrigued to hear you say that you used to be quite a quiet operator and that you spent a lot of time writing submissions to advance some of these initiatives, but you found that a little bit frustrating. And we can hear actually that you've got beyond that because you have created really great partnerships with council and other people. But you eventually felt that that wasn't enough — you had to become active. And we've just mentioned that you're the President of Balwyn Rotary, a very prestigious club. So why do you think Rotary specifically is a good organisation for getting initiatives like this off the ground, and to help private individuals like yourself to achieve their goals and their purpose?

Julie: So another great question. Can I be honest? I didn't actually know much about Rotary when I joined Balwyn Rotary. And I specifically joined Balwyn Rotary because Murray Wilkinson had launched the Nature Strips Project, and I thought I could assist. And it's been quite the steep learning curve in becoming a member, then becoming president. But Rotary's a really interesting organisation for this type of process because each club is very individual and hyper-local. The members can choose the projects that they work on and support. So it has that very much embedded in the community and members' interests, but then it acts at scale. So through a global network, it's possible to share these ideas to scale and transfer ideas. Rotary, because it has this long-standing reputation, a good reputation and non-partisan standing, it is a really different kind of organisation to have these projects from, because of the broad base of people who might be engaged. And more and more, again, it's the same thing — people who would like to have initiatives that do these good things but they're not quite sure where to start. I've come from climate and environment advocacy and action, so I feel a bit more familiar, I suppose, with what models work in this space. So that gives particularly the peer-to-peer information sharing.

Lili-Ann: Yeah, I love what you say about Rotary and it kind of echoes what you just said about the nature strip. The nature strip is personal and local, something that really is meaningful to you. But when you join with other people, then it goes out into the community and it can go as far as being global. And the same as Rotary — I think you used these words to me one time when you said it's very fine grained, like that's each individual's thread of purpose, but then it can link. There are all of these trajectories and pathways to connect you to other people all the way to a global level. But you're not a person who sits around without thinking about these things. And I know that you told Ted Waghorn and some people that you would attend the Zone 8 conference, but you didn't just turn up. There was a meeting that you created in advance of that that I thought was fabulous, and I'd love you to tell people a little bit about that meeting.

Julie: So that came about because I didn't want to go empty-handed. I thought if I'm going to a Zone 8 conference and I'd offered to help on the ESRAG stall, I needed to come with something rather than come empty-handed.

Lili-Ann: I just want us to say what ESRAG is. So it's the Environmental and Sustainability Rotary Action Group, which makes sense in this context. But sometimes people say, what kind of RAG? Anyway, you didn't want to go empty-handed.

Julie: So I considered what I would do. And I had this idea that I'd be able to develop a template, and I'd take a template, and I'd be able to share that with people who were at the conference, and they'd be able to take it back to their clubs or districts. And so I convened something called a roundtable and I just reached out in my network and I didn't have a firm idea what it would be. And I said, are you interested and what dates are you available? And I got such a wonderful response. I thought, how can I use this opportunity where we're meeting for a shared purpose, but we're meeting in person. So I developed the twin objectives of facilitating connections, but also developing a shared knowledge resource. Because this is a process that's reasonably straightforward, I did a framework for that and got the participants to identify areas where they either wanted to learn more or they had something new to share. And it turned out that there were just two top issues. And so that meant that there was a really focused discussion, one after each other, where we all listened and equally contributed and that built up this knowledge base. And it was a really great process and that's when I realised, well, I'm not taking a template. But I do have now a pretty good understanding of what the highest value in the process is. And so it more resembles a recipe of principles for a beneficial process.

Lili-Ann: I found that really fascinating that you would go so broad before arriving at the place that you'd offered or volunteered. And I found that story really quite inspirational. And I think it's not the only time that you've worked with other people to build kind of specialised knowledge, and particularly knowledge that results in efficacious action and action that is scalable. I think a lot of people need to listen carefully to the word scalable here. And you mentioned, we had a long conversation, that Electrify Boroondara is one of the things that you've been very interested in, but also it is something that's impacted your thinking and understanding. So would you tell us a little bit about who inspired you at Electrify Boroondara, and what about that project is memorable and important for you?

Julie: So Electrify Boroondara — I was involved very early in the launch of the first expo that they had. So my friend Carolyn Ingverson was a co-founder of it. And she's good friends with Ted Waghorn, who was then with Canterbury Rotary. So my role was in launching the expo. And it was this strange situation where it absolutely was going to be a fantastic organisation, a fantastic event, but it didn't yet exist. It had no history, but it had all these highly accomplished, experienced people behind it. And my job was to get, I think, 40 exhibitors and speakers and panellists, all kinds of people, offering up their Sunday to be part of the expo. And it was a terribly frustrating endeavour at the start. And I brainstormed with a friend, Philippa Scholl, who was also doing the same. And we worked out how we would make it real, even though it wasn't. And Ted was very important at that stage because Rotary was a well-known brand and having Ted's letter of support from Carolyn, but also we used visual assets. And from being pretty much refused every time we rang people up to say "wouldn't this be a good idea to give up your Sunday for?", we got people very excited and committing, and it was a wonderful success. I mean, it was a lot of people combined to ensure that, but it was that interesting process of trying to sell to people a good idea, but then trying to make it more concrete so that they could commit.

Lili-Ann: Yes, it's actually a very interesting threshold, isn't it? Having something in your imagination and making it real. And I think you're right — visuals and visual storytelling are some of the ways that people can connect. But we know 100% that projects don't run themselves, they just don't. So along the way, and you've discussed some of them already, you've discovered some of the techniques and the skills, like maybe the visual storytelling and the roundtable. But what are some of the things that you've done that have become important processes?

Julie: I realised when I was reflecting on it. So my background as a radiologist means that I'm thinking algorithms. So my decision-making pathway is very logical and stepwise, needs to be reproducible and accountable. So that's a process that I'm well familiar with. But I've also run projects at different scales over the years. And I had the benefit of specific training through Boroondara Council — I've run a sustainable leaders course, and I was the first intake year that they ran a full program. So we actually had professional training in project design, management, evaluation, and all of these skills that you need as a volunteer to make things happen. But it did align with my professional experience. And so that discipline of clarifying objectives, of honestly assessing your resources, making a priority with your objectives, mapping back all your actions, testing it, monitoring and evaluating, looking for risks, looking for ways that you can tweak it. And I think you could hear, like in the designing of the roundtable, there's this process of looking — I ended up with more resources than I thought I would, which gave me a different opportunity, but also refined my priority list. So I think if you've had training in this and practice with it, it's something that you can reproduce, you develop confidence, but it's definitely something that can be taught.

Lili-Ann: Yes, one of the things you said — oh my gosh, it was so profound to me — was that it's much easier to work from within the tent than outside it. And so inside the tent is where you're already engaged with people that are within an organisation that have structures for working, that have networks, that have modes of operation. And so you're not kind of trying to put it all together. But I also know that you don't only rely on that, so you bring things into the tent. I've heard that, and I think you are great at it. Now, you have another technique that you really respect and also another deep interest. And so it is about listening. And your other deep interest really is in bringing about peace. So you're a very strong advocate for that. So would you like to describe to our listeners what that is all about?

Julie: So deep listening is, again, it's a skill that we can all learn. And it's a way of being present and being curious about people who you don't necessarily know. You may not even agree with them. And it's that reflexive questioning and then listening properly to the answers, not to have a social conversation, but to actually understand properly where that person's concerns are, what their hopes are. And hopefully you identify shared points of values and that allows you to have constructive conversations where you're working from a shared viewpoint and you identify this public good, this public good that you would hope that you aspire to. And they're very effective tools for social cohesion and starting from a point of curiosity, and asking what and how reflexive questions rather than a defensive question are really important skills.

Lili-Ann: I'm going to do a little bit of a wrap-up of this, and then I'm going to ask you to share a quote with our listeners. And one of the images I have from this interview, Julie, is you with a garden trowel, which I think is sometimes maybe what people will see when they see Julie as the person who completely transformed her home into a very sustainable home and your nature strip into a biodiverse piece of Melbourne. But there's so much more. I mentioned that we are involved with very complex and very durable issues and they're not going away. And I think it's really great for our listeners to hear the depth of thinking, the skills, the processes that you are able to bring. And I'm really delighted that you're in a presidential role in a Rotary Club because I think it does add to the scope of everything you can do. And I love how you gather perspectives and I really respect the professionalism you bring to everything that you do. And so I would like you then to — I asked you earlier in the week if you had a quote that made sense to you. And I'm hoping that you've arrived tonight with one of them.

Julie: It's a very kind assessment, Lili-Ann. I've chosen as my quote: turning excuses into actions.

Lili-Ann: I think that actually will make us all stand up and say, oh my goodness, because sometimes all we have is excuses, isn't it? So your peer-to-peer way of going out to talk to other people, small visible actions — all of those are going to inspire people to take action. So it's been an absolute delight speaking to you tonight, and I wish you really the very best of luck for your year as President of the Balwyn Rotary Club.

Julie: Thank you very much, Lili-Ann. I've really enjoyed this.

Lili-Ann: Great. And for our listeners, we'll be back next week with more interviews and lots more music and we hope you have a fabulous night.