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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Complimentary Working Bee August A supplementary working bee was quickly added during the week, before Covid19 stage 3 restrictions came into place. Planting and setting up more wallaby guards. Please note this was not a normal working bee, a small dedicated group (committee members and partners). The working bee was more due to needing to get the plants into the ground before the planting season (mid May- late Aug) is over. The time frame is crucial for tubestock, as it should give the tubestock the time to get used to its new surroundings, before the frosts of spring and the hot dry days of summer.
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October 2020 Report: October’s working bees were split into two locations: Working bee 1 involved four volunteers walking west from Wilson’s Road to Harmers Haven pulling sea spurge as they walked. Happily only a few hot spots were found; evidence that our contractor’s and volunteers’ work over the years has restored a significant amount of indigenous dune habitat. Working bee 2 involved 9 volunteers at the upper reserve at Undertow Bay undertaking the removal of hard rubbish from an illegal camp site, and carrying out english broom and sweet pittosporum removal. But for COVID restrictions, this should have been done during our April and May working bees. There is still more woody weed to remove from this site in future working bees.
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November working bee 2020 Over the last few months small groups of dedicated local volunteers have spent many hours planting the remaining indigenous seedlings in the Undertow Bay coastal reserve. Today’s Covid-safe working bee, our last for 2020, was revisiting the Cassia Street reserve to remove any weeds and rubbish that has accumulated over the past couple of years. 13 eager volunteers met at the Wonthaggi Lifesaving Club car park and split into small groups before heading to the reserve. It was great to welcome our Melbourne cohort who could now travel to Cape Paterson after 4 months of Covid-19 lockdown. Good rainfall over winter/spring has produced excellent growing conditions for the many indigenous plants that we have put in this reserve over the years. However it also meant that woody weed seedlings (sweet pittosporum and mirror bush) also flourished. So there was plenty of weeding for our enthusiastic workers. We removed a sprawling patch of nasturtiums, dug out a number of blackberry patches and attacked numerous other exotic weeds. Once again, Leone produced a superb morning tea in sunshine and a yummy bbq lunch. Thanks everyone for your efforts in what has proven to be a very difficult year.
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Planting and weeding in the Undertow Bay Reserve. Immature sweet pittosporums were removed that hadn't been treated by our contractors. All work was socially distanced.
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March 2021 Working Bee Report On Sunday 7 March we met at Allan Birt Reserve and joined the annual Clean Up Cape Paterson event. People worked in teams to cover allocated areas and this contributed to the sense of improving our community. It was good to see that the amount of rubbish collected reduced again this year compared with previous years although we still managed to collect 11 bags of rubbish and recyclables as well as three abandoned bicycles. A big thank you to Rohan Brown for organising the event and to Leonie Thiele for preparing the barbeque lunch afterwards.
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Pete Muskens
The objective of our April working bee was to pull up an infestation of sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias) located in the sand dunes half way between Cape Paterson and Harmers Haven. The colonisation of the sea spurge weed on the primary dunes contributes to steepening the face of the dunes thus impacting adversely on Hooded Plover breeding sites. It also competes with the growth of native spinifex & pigface. We combined with Harmers Haven Residents and Ratepayers Group to do this work and 10 enthusiastic volunteers set out from Wreck Beach carpark at 9:30am. Half of the group went straight to the infestation, about 1 km east of Wreck Beach, while the rest traversed the dunes on the way pulling up any sea spurge seedlings that had emerged over the summer. Despite gale force winds (at times blowing up hill!) and driving rain, by midday the infestation had been cleared and that section of dunes were free of any emerging seedlings. The sodden volunteers really appreciated the hearty lunch provided by our Harmers Haven friends in a lovely warm cottage. A very successful working bee in somewhat trying conditions.
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This working bee was a follow up to our 5 year (and counting!) project to eliminate woody and viniferous weeds to the Undertow Bay foreshore and restore our coastal banksia woodland. Ten participants trawled through the gully between the fore dune and the cliffs from the eastern most path westwards to the Pea Creek steps. Plantings were cleared of invasive and smothering vines and woody weed regrowth re-cut and re poisoned. Work was carried out in glorious sunny weather conditions unlike the last working bee!
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