March 2, 2015
Volunteers rolled up their sleeves at clean-up sites around the South Burnett on Sunday morning to help “clean up Australia”.
They were taking part in the annual “Clean Up Australia Day” activities, and the sites they chose ranged from the D’Aguilar Highway south of Nanango to Kingaroy’s Memorial Park and Somerset Street traffic island, the Ficks Crossing Recreation Area near Wondai and Ted Klohs Park in Murgon.
In Nanango, members of the Nanango Tourism and Development Association (NaTDA) conducted their quarterly clean-up along both sides of the D’Aguilar Highway from Brown Street to the Tarong Road turn-off.
NaTDA chose the strip as part of the nation-wide “Adopt A Spot” campaign about 18 months ago, and since then members have been putting in a morning’s work every three months to keep it clean and tidy.
While most of the group undertook an emu parade along the roadsides, Cr Barry Green (a member of both NaTDA and the Nanango Race Club) used the morning’s effort to mount a ride-on mower and tidy up the grass surrounding the recently erected entrance to Racecourse Road.
In Kingaroy, the Kingaroy Girl Guides troop carried out a clean-up of the Somerset Street median strip from the peanut silos past the CTC Youth Park to Knight Street, then circled back to do a general clean-up of the Senior Citizens Park and Pound Street community gardens area.
Troop leader Amanda May said the clean-up generated several bags of rubbish – mostly fast food containers and wrappings plus a few empty beer bottles – but she was very proud of the guides who’d turned out to help and thought the morning helped instill good community values.
Participating Guides also earned points towards three badges from their morning’s work.
Elsewhere, other groups took part in a brisk morning clean-up of Memorial Park, helping to get the area ready for the upcoming Wine and Food In The Park Festival on March 14 while in Wondai, volunteers from Arethusa College and the general community carried out a three-hour clean-up of the Ficks Crossing recreation area beside Barambah Creek.
But perhaps the most adventurous Sunday morning clean-up this year was at Murgon’s Ted Klohs Park – otherwise known as “The Lily Ponds” – where Cr Kathy Duff and a small group of volunteers took to a flat-bottomed boat to fish rubbish out of the park’s lake.
They recovered used car and tractor tyres, empty milk bottles and general wind-blown rubbish, along with a hypodermic needle that volunteers quickly disposed of.
The volunteers also whipper-snipped the lake’s edges and picked up rubbish on the ground, leaving the site spotless before lunchtime.
