"How about you try to give me a bit of a smile," said our photographer, Adam Trafford, impervious to the gallant nature of his request.

The exhortation was, unsurprisingly, met with little more than a narrowing of Palmer's already narrow eyes. Click, click, click, click.

Seconds later, Palmer verbalised the obvious, on the off-chance it had escaped Trafford's notice.

"I cannot smile on cue; it's a well-known family fact," he roundly declared.

Earlier, I'd met Palmer on the footbridge to Wallaby Track, just off Humffray Street South, under which the Yarrowee River flows. Leaning on the edge of the bridge railings, the former social studies teacher of 40 years gestured to the river.

"Some people say it's not as good as it used to be, but strangely enough it's the best it's been in 100 years," he said. "And see those trees over there to the side, they look old but they're not. I helped plant them not less than 10 years ago. All of this used to be open paddocks.

"It is amazing, isn't it," he added, his eyes trained on the tallest branch of the tallest tree.

Unlike most people, Palmer has spent much of his life bridging that rugged terrain between what we know about ecological devastation and what is within our individual power to remedy it.

Where once the challenge was to persuade people of the environment's famously inconvenient truths, today it's one of transcending that basal sense of fatalism; how to inspire those acquainted with the grim realities of the climate crisis to resist retreating into the paralysing inertia of ordinary life.

Palmer grew up in nearby Mount Pleasant in a large, working class, Methodist household. An outdoor type by inclination, the meandering Yarrowee River was, he told me, his and his siblings' "natural playground".

But his early memories of the river were not those of an Elysian landscape, peppered with hidden wonder and adventure. They were, conversely, that of a dead river, polluted beyond imagination.

"I remember coming home from school on my pushy, crossing the creek, and it'd be pink some days, and blue or brown others," Palmer said, a reality concealed in old sepia photographs of the Yarrowee.

"For a long time, it was treated as a drain, not a river, and right up until 1970 it was a sewer. My parents owned a big laundry over there on Pryor Street, and the dirty water would just go straight into the creek here."

The unhealthy colouring of the river, Palmer explained, mainly owed to the old woollen mill, which from 1873 used the water to dispose of toxic residues from dyeing, as well as run-off from dozens of other, now disbanded, factories and tanneries.

Long before the city's early industrialisation, however, the river had already been degraded during the gold rush years; its once pristine waters yellowed in the pursuit of gold, as miners turned it and the surrounding valley to mud.

Indeed, the visible degradation of the river, in the years of Palmer's childhood, he said, was accepted as ordinary, not extraordinary; an unnatural backdrop to the natural order of things.

For well over a century, the deleterious condition of the river shadowed the long march of time; its changing complexion an omnipresent reflection of the region's shifting commercial activities and priorities.

The first major turning point, in Palmer's view, dawned in the 1960s, when the sewerage was expanded.

"It was probably the first time I really became aware of how the creek wasn't just a dumping ground, even though everybody was looking at it that way," he said.

That period, which serendipitously coincided with the rise of environmental movements worldwide, marked the starting point, in Palmer's mind, of a complex conversation between hope and doubt - those opposing emotions which give definition to one's perception of the future.

It also taught Palmer to apply his inquiring mind, and seek answers outside the strictures of what he had, until then, assumed to be objectively true.

After finishing school, Palmer left Ballarat for Melbourne to study - fittingly - history, devoting his spare time to social and environmental issues, including the historic Franklin Dam protests. Shortly after graduating, he took a teaching position in Mildura.

To his mind, teaching was more than a vocational choice. It was an occupation which, distilled, complemented his belief in the irrevocable duty of mankind to be accountable to the generations who come after us.

"I just love working with young people," he told me, with a slight trace of a smile. "I really liked the idea of bringing about social change through education."

In his time at Mildura, Palmer involved himself in environmental initiatives around the Murray River, while doing his level best to subtly dismantle entrenched symbols of class.

"I used to coach rowing, mainly because the idea of introducing sport to kids appealed to me," he said. "But I also did it to tackle its elitist bent. Of course, I never succeeded, but gee I got a lot of kids going through."

After 28 years in Mildura, the call of family saw Palmer's return to Ballarat. Almost immediately, he took charge of Ballarat's Clean Up Australia Day program, which concentrates its attention on the Yarrowee River.

It bears emphasising, however, that the river to which Palmer returned bore little resemblance to that which he left behind. In the intervening years, the combined efforts of various environmental groups, various organisations and the City of Ballarat had radically transformed the banks of the Yarrowee.

Under the guidance of a 1991 masterplan, thousands of native plants and trees were planted along the river corridor, while introduced species, such as willows, were gradually removed. Over time, related major works, like the Redan wetlands, were also completed, and, more recently, a 15km walking trail.

But problems remain. All manner of refuse - including shopping trolleys, syringes, tyres, but mainly plastic waste - end up in the river, carried there by torrents of stormwater after heavy rain.

Much of it, though, is not immediately obvious; to chance upon it, it's invariably necessary to wade through to the river's edge.

Most concerning, to Palmer's mind, was the unspeakable extent of microplastic waste, masked beneath the wild beauty of the area. As we walked up around and past the Redan wetlands, Palmer led me shady part of the river, still lined with willows, soon to be removed.

"Look over there, see that?" he said, pointing to some plastic bottles. "Now, if you go in down over there and clear that area up, you'll find it's full of microplastics - it's unbelievable - tiny bits of plastic everywhere."

"All of this plastic is going somewhere; what we don't get out, which is only a fraction of it, ends up down stream somewhere."

Though a litter trapper was installed in the Redan wetlands around ten years ago, it's long since fallen into disuse, and is now almost entirely concealed by a carpet of weeds and surrounding rubbish.

A City of Ballarat spokesperson explained this by pointing out council had shifted to other litter management tools, such as nets and crates, to manage the Yarrowee River.

In Palmer's view, however, one might validly hang a question mark over the efficacy of such tools, given a Clean Up Australia team of volunteers can fill an entire skip within two hours, concentrating on a single pocket of the river. A better solution, Palmer said, would be to install floating litter traps, like those used along the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers.

"I've lobbied time and again about this, but they never listen," he said. "They have invested a lot in the paths and improving access, but they just don't seem to be interested in the river itself - I can't explain it."

On the walk back, I noticed Palmer's brow had furrowed, as though he was immersed in thought. I wondered if he was reflecting on how dispiriting a situation it was - to see the river largely rewilded, yet to be so far from realising its full promise.

But I was quickly disabused of the notion. With characteristic abruptness, Palmer pointed at some lava rock. "Geography lesson," he said. "I can't help it - I'm still a teacher at heart."

I learned the Redan Wetlands was, until some 40 years ago, a toxic wasteland, after having been a mining site for so many years.

These days, trees and shrubs line the pathway, along which a family of fairywrens rule, unopposed. Behind the river reeds of a small, wooden footbridge, I could hear the murmur of amphibian life and the distant squawk of a magpie.

Looking around, Palmer remarked, "and so I'd say it looks pretty good, really."

This, I realised, was Palmer's overarching philosophy. Every small, even seemingly futile, step towards change matters: nothing is inherently destined to be, even in this Anthropocene age.

Whether history remembers or forgets Palmer is a moot point. What is known is that his, and the combined efforts of others, reduce the footprint of mankind. And that footprint, much like the lava rock Palmer pointed to, will be etched into rock, discoverable by geologists millions of years from now: a permanent record of where we failed, or succeeded, in our actions.

The Yarrowee River Clean Up Australia Day event is on Sunday March 6 at 10am. Click here for more details or to donate.

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