Clean up Australia Day in the creeklands - saved by the next generation!

Last Sunday, in response to an alert from Armidale Regional Council sent out just two days earlier, some of our community turned up to the Clean-Up Australia Day community event to clean up our creeklands and parks.

In his welcome to the event, local First Nations representative, Brad Widders, spoke passionately of the need for all of us to look after country - if we want the country to look after us.

Representatives of our association participated in the event but we were struck by how few adult residents turned up to help. The day was saved when over 100 TAS (The Armidale School) students (years 6 to 12) arrived ready to help clean out the creek.

A truckload of shopping carts harvested from a short section of Dumaresq Creek - or is in Dumaresq Drain?

When people in the community talk to our association about the creeklands, the most common thing they say is “why doesn’t the Council keep the creeklands clean - especially by removing shopping carts?” Well, it seems Council will do this - at least on Clean up Australia Day - so long as the community helps.

But why isn’t this be an everyday thing? We guess that Council cannot afford to have a team on-hand just for the creeklands. And surely we all need to realise that it is members of our community who are putting the rubbish in the creek - so we have to address that collectively.

Our association has as its aim: “To assist in the careful planning, design and development of beautiful, healthy and safe public spaces featuring wetlands, lagoons and billabongs, connected by flowing water along the Armidale Creeklands”. When we realise this dream, the creeklands will be so much better utilised and enjoyed every day of the year, the community will see that it is healthy, well-cared-for and beautiful, visitors and residents will value the entire precinct more and rubbish in the creek will be a thing of the past.

After 3 hours, a truckload of bags of rubbish - mostly plastic - plus discarded furniture.

We thank all those who participated, including our Mayor and Deputy Mayor (we are told), but especially, the school students who enthusiastically cleaned up our city’s main artery.

They saved the day! Just some of the wonderful 100+ student crew from TAS , The Armidale School (years 6 to 12), after 3 hours of hard work - with truckloads of trolleys and rubbish they cleaned up from the creeklands.

Of course, the efforts of the day stretched along only a part of the creek - up and downstream from the Information Centre - so there is a long length of creek that did not get cleaned on the day.

We wonder if Council had given us more notice, if Council had invited interested community groups like ours and the Armidale Urban Rivercare Group (AURG) to have displays on-hand, whether the event might have been even more successful. Most would know - and appreciate - that community groups such as AURG already do a great deal to maintain and improve our creeklands with many volunteers involved in regular working bees.

Our association - Visions for Armidale Creeklands - wants to complement the work of other groups such as AURG.

We think that the community, and Council, are still not doing enough to identify just what our broad community wants in terms of a “Vision” for the creeklands and getting on with the job. Yes, Stage 1 of the Creeklands Master Plan is funded and plans are currently being prepared by Council; but so much more engagement with the community is needed if this money is to deliver a great outcome.

We don’t believe that the creeklands, currently, are beautiful and healthy. We want to see environmental water restored to our intermittent creek which, last Sunday, was reduced to just a trickle after this past dry summer. If our society can retain water for environmental flows in the Murray-Darling Basin, why can’t we do the same in our upland, inland environment which needs all the healthy water it can get.

We will be seeking young people’s Visions … and rewarding them!

To help us add to our association’s “Visions” we will soon be embarking on a Sponsorship Campaign to raise funds to expand our Visions across the community. Some of the money raised will go to generous prizes for school students who come up with the most inspirational ideas for improving our most precious public space - the creeklands - which stretch along our entire beautiful city.

So, watch out for our campaign and support us if you can. If any in the community can assist us, why not join us?

And, students, watch out for your opportunity to put your best ideas forward.

The entire community needs your ideas to stimulate further action so that we can “look after our country - so it will look after us!”