September 10, 2015
Students from Yarraman State School took to the banks of Yarraman Creek this week to help complete the final phase of a multi-year restoration project.
For the last few years, the Friends Of Yarraman Creek have been involved in a major undertaking.
Members of this not-for-profit community group have been patiently restoring the formerly overgrown and rubbish-strewn stretch of the creek that winds around the southern edge of Errol Munt Park.
The group have removed tonnes of weeds and rubbish from the area, then replanted the creek’s banks with Australian natives.
And as the work has progressed, the area has sprung back to life.
Yarraman Creek now boasts a small platypus colony, and native birds have begun to return to the area, too.
Toowoomba Regional Council has assisted the project by providing signage and permission for the group to undertake the project, but the majority of the work – and the cost of buying Australian natives – has been borne by the group.
The group started its regeneration work at the eastern end of the park and has slowly worked its way along both sides of the riverbank.
Recently they completed the final stretch between a footbridge that links Errol Munt Part with Yarraman’s sports fields and a private landholder’s fence that marks Errol Munt Park’s western edge.
And on Monday they invited Yarraman State School students to come help them plant natives along the final stretch.
The community get-together was timed to coincide with Threatened Species Day, which marks the day the last Tasmanian Tiger died in captivity in Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936.
Yarraman State School principal Carmel McKeering, who was a biologist before she became an educator, leapt at the opportunity.
“We offered this to our best-behaved students as a reward for good attendance and conduct,” she said.
“They were very keen to get involved.”
Students hard at work on the creek bank agreed that it was a great project to be involved in.
“This creek used to be pretty awful,” 13-year-old Lachlan Roberts told southburnett.com.au.
“It was covered with weeds and rubbish and no-one ever came here. But now we’re planting it and that makes it our creek too.”
Friends Of Yarraman Creek president Scott Riley said he was very proud to have local school children involved in the project.
He thought it would help foster their sense of ownership of the creek, as well as help them become more aware of the need to conserve and care for Australian native bushland.
“Most of the natives we’ve planted will probably take three or four years to really find their feet,” he said.
“But thanks to the students, we know we’ll have a lot of sets of eyes watching over the creek while this happens. And that’s got to be a good thing.”
After the morning’s activities, the mixed group of students, teachers and Friends Of Yarraman Creek members celebrated their work with a special cake brought along for the occasion.
Toowoomba Regional Council also supplied a new sign to mark the completion of the project.
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