HISTORY OF OUR REEF STORIES
Built through partnership. Held now by mob.
ORIGINS OF THE PLATFORM
Our Reef Stories was developed under the Reef Trust Partnership, a landmark $443.3 million partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, established in 2018 to significantly improve the health of the Great Barrier Reef.
Within that partnership, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Traditional Owners co-designed the $51.8 million Traditional Owner Reef Protection program funding work across four key areas:
• Healthy Water
• Integrated Monitoring & Reporting
• Reef Restoration & Adaptation Science
• Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Control
Our Reef Stories was created for Traditional Owners to share the work and outcomes of this program — a direct platform for Traditional Owner voices, projects and leadership across the Reef.
A CO-DESIGNED APPROACH
The Traditional Owner Reef Protection program was shaped through co-design, placing Traditional Owners at the centre of decisions about their Country, communities and futures. Four principles guided this approach.
Prioritise Relationships
Showing up with a supportive mindset, with relationships at the heart of how the work happens and investing in the time required for everyone to meaningfully contribute
Share Power
Bringing in Traditional Owners with lived experience and diverse perspectives to design programs together, at a Reef and Catchment-wide level.
Build Capacity
Investing in the system and process to strengthen skills, cultural safety and ethical practice for Traditional Owners and partners alike so that multiple voices can be heard.
Use Participatory Means
Co-creating, co-developing and collaborating with Traditional Owners through multiple and diverse methods designed to fit each group and context.
This approach shaped not just the program, but the platform that grew out of it.
Early in the Reef Trust Partnership, four Traditional Owner governance bodies were established to bring these principles to life. A Traditional Owner Advisory Group (TOAG) provided Traditional Owner–based strategic advice to the Reef Trust Partnership and leadership in decisions affecting Traditional Owners and their land and Sea Country.
Three Traditional Owner Technical Working Groups (TWGs) brought lived experience, diverse skills and professional expertise to shape program strategy, design and delivery for each key work area.
These bodies, in partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, alongside the many Traditional Owner groups who contributed stories and led work on Country, are the people whose vision, leadership and care were foundational to Our Reef Stories.
THE JOURNEY
Over the life of the Reef Trust Partnership, Traditional Owner groups across the Reef contributed their stories, video, photography and lived experience to Our Reef Stories. The platform grew into a meaningful collection of voices from Country — Elders, rangers, young leaders, storytellers and knowledge holders sharing what matters across saltwater, land and sky.
These stories carry the work of many — those who told them, those who held the camera, those who shaped the platform, those who worked behind the scenes to make space for the voices to be heard.
the transition
As the Reef Trust Partnership drew to a close, the question was where Our Reef Stories should live next. Built to hold Traditional Owner voices, stories and leadership, the platform was always meant to find its home with the people whose stories it carries — and so it has.
In 2026, Our Reef Stories transitioned from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation into the custodianship of ReefTO — the Great Barrier Reef Traditional Owner Taskforce.
This is more than a change of hosts. It marks the platform coming into Traditional Owner leadership — held by mob, shaped by Traditional Owner authority, and carried forward as part of the journey toward a ReefTO Alliance.
The Reef Trust Partnership created the foundation. ReefTO stewards what comes next.
acknowledgements
We acknowledge the work and care that brought Our Reef Stories to this moment:
• The Reef Trust Partnership — a collaboration between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation — and the $51.8 million Traditional Owner Reef Protection program it delivered. The program’s work across Sea and Catchment Country — ranger programs, monitoring, restoration, partnerships and cultural leadership — has shaped much of what is shared on this platform.
• The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which hosted Our Reef Stories through the Reef Trust Partnership and worked alongside Traditional Owners through its development.
• The Traditional Owner Advisory Group and the Traditional Owner Technical Working Groups, whose leadership shaped the program.
• The Traditional Owner groups, storytellers, rangers, Elders and young leaders whose voices and lived experience are held here.
Our Reef Stories carries the work of many hands. We honour that here.
Our Reef Stories was originally funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
LOOKING AHEAD
Our Reef Stories continues now under the leadership of the ReefTO Taskforce, with ongoing governance to transfer to a ReefTO Alliance once established.
In the months and years ahead, we’ll be re-engaging with the contributors whose stories are already held here, making sure each story sits with the care and consent it deserves. We’ll be adding new Traditional Owner–led stories — of Country, work, leadership, community, mob and knowledge — gathered from across the Reef. And we’ll be growing the platform into what we believe it can become: a vital, self-determined library of stories from Reef Traditional Owners, held for future generations.
To learn more about ReefTO, visit reefto.au.
For more on the Reef Trust Partnership and the Traditional Owner Reef Protection program, visit https://www.barrierreef.org/what-we-do/reef-trust-partnership/traditional-owner-reef-protection