Our working bees do great work cleaning up and rehabilitating the local coastal reserves. You can see some of our current and past working bees listed below. Everyone is welcome to join in, with no experience necessary. Usually we ask you to bring your own hat and gloves, sunblock and water, and we occasionally have lunches or morning teas afterwards. Come and meet the locals and make Cape a cleaner and greener place too!
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Pete Muskens
Five hardy souls walked through the dunes and found where Birdlife had done their working bee in one of the upper dunes. There is still much to remove at this site and will flag it for next year's working bee. A informal lounge suite camp / dump was also found at the end of the path of 2nd surf car park - this will be reported to Parks Vic.
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Pete Muskens
Ten hardy souls braced the blustery conditions to root out spurge west of F break. The fact that we only managed to fill one garden bag with spurge shows that our efforts over the years have been worth it. It remains a control operation now to ensure that only the residual seed load is eliminated.
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Pete Muskens
A small contingent (4 from Cape Paterson, 1 from Inverloch, and one from Birdlife) braved the blustery conditions (thankfully no rain) at Twin Reefs and then The Oaks. There was minimal spurge at Twin Reefs (1/2 a large bag) but considerably more at The Oaks. We met the federal grant representatives at the Oaks car park for a sandwich lunch afterwards (provided by South Gippsland Conservation Society).
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Pete Muskens
Today we had 10 hardy souls braving the cold for our final assault on the tecoma in the Cassia Street reserve. We managed to complete the removal started on the largest infestation (see the before and after photos below) and to start on the removal of a less dense outbreak to the south of where we were working and also we started on the removal of Cape Ivy that is also starting to make inroads into the reserve. We hope to continue our work here next year because the next few months will concentrate on doing some planting preparation and planting at the boat ramp.
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Pete Muskens
We had a small turnout for today's working bee but this enthusiastic bunch hoed into a very thick patch of tecoma leaving a huge pile for council to pick up in due course.
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Pete Muskens
We had a comparitively small turn out for the day but we did manage to clear a big patch of tacoma.
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Pete Muskens
Today we again cleared a rubbish from the streets and coastal reserve of Cape Paterson. As with previous years, the amount of rubbish collected was less than the year before. It's heartening to see that, as a community, we are doing better all the time.
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Pete Muskens
On February 8th our working bee volunteers split into three groups; one to pull gazania off the nature strips before they start infesting the coastal reserve, the second group pulled a heavy infestation of English Ivy (Header helix) in the Alan Birt Reserve, and the other group were clearing weeds engulfing last year’s plantings on the boat ramp slope. With some Bass Coast Shire Council work crew support we may be able to get the kikuyu on the hill slope and the Ivy regrowth sprayed in the near future. Below is a before and after shot of a mature gum in danger of being strangled by the ivy. As you can see, it is now a climbable object for adventurous kids!
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Pete Muskens
We made further inroads into the boneseed infestation with some minor hiccups during the working bee. As is common after woody weed clearing there was some thistle emerging - this will need monitoring and spraying. Planting from earlier this year appear to be thriving. Sadly there is still more to do next year but with some council help we may be able to finish off this infestation.
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Pete Muskens
We had eight volunteers to lend a hand in eradicating some pittosporum, polygala and boneseed (and a rogue pine tree) in the reserve adjacent to Surf Beach Road. With so few numbers there was no chance re-visit the area west of the 1st surf beach car park but we were able to clear some patches that had been left for some years. One of the photos show a freshly lopped boneseed stump with growth rings indication that it had been growing undisturbed for at least the past six years.
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