Born and raised in the western suburbs of Melbourne (West Footscray and Keilor, to be precise), Ross now lives with his wife and partner of more than forty years, Julie Phillips (a photographer), on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Daylesford in the Central Highlands of Victoria. In 2017 he retired from the Victorian Public Service, for which he had worked as a manager responsible for (amongst other things) environmental and indigenous partnerships programs in the west of the state. This involved working closely with Wautherong, Gunditjmara and Dja Dja Wurrung traditional owner groups on projects such as the restoration of Lake Condah in the Budj Bim landscape (now a World Heritage site) and the implementation of the Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Owner Settlement Agreement. Prior to that he had a wide variety of roles in state and local government, which included working in the 1980s for the Department of Premier and Cabinet (under Premier John Cain) on the development of the Crimes (Family Violence) Act, and then for the Education Ministry overseeing the production of a book on family violence for use by educators.
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