Lara

Distinguished and Famous people from Lara

🌟 Kevin and Beverley Hoffman

Kevin and Beverley Hoffman began caring for young ironbarks beside Hovells Creek after buying their Lara block in 1967. The work gradually extended beyond their own garden to the nature strip and creek banks. Hauling water in buckets was part of the early effort, before the planting became a community landscape. In 1991, the Shire of Corio formally named the area Kevin Hoffman Walk. A Friends group formed in 2013 to help maintain and preserve it. Their story is a particularly tangible kind of local contribution: years of gardening changed a shared outdoor place, one tree and planting bed at a time.

📚 David Dexter

David Dexter spent part of his childhood in a clergy house at Lara, one of several homes associated with his father’s ministry. He later studied history and served as a commando officer in Timor and New Guinea during World War II, surviving five bullet wounds in the Ramu Valley. His postwar career brought those interests together in The New Guinea Offensives, published in 1961 as part of Australia’s official war history. Dexter organised his research into six master diaries. The former boy from Lara became both a participant in wartime events and one of their painstaking chroniclers.