November 30, 2017
The Friends Of Yarraman Creek have been selected as runners-up in this year’s Queensland State Landcare Awards.
The small volunteer group have been working to rehabilitate a section of Yarraman Creek running beside Errol Munt Park for several years.
The area, which was formerly weed-infested, rubbish strewn and heavily polluted, has been gradually returned to its natural state and is now home to Australian native plants and animals, including platypus.
The group were nominated for this year’s Fairfax Media Landcare Community Group Award.
This was one of nine major awards in the competition, which attracted close to 400 nominations State-wide.
And while they placed second, the group say they are very happy with the outcome.
“We won a Healthy Waterways Award in 2016 and we are humbled to have run second in a state-wide competition with so many deserving projects,” secretary Susan Reilly said.
“On a good day the Friends Of Yarraman Creek can put seven volunteers in the field, so this is a wonderful outcome for us.”
Earlier this year, the group won first prize for a Community Organisation Garden in this year’s Colours Of Yarraman garden competition.
The Friends have also recently begun long-term aerial surveillance of their project.
On November 10, drone photographer Adrian Morrison took a sequence of aerial photos along the full length of the Yarraman Creek project to provide a different view of the restoration work.
The group hope Mr Morrison will now return on an annual basis to re-shoot the same terrain so they build up a long-term photographic record of the project’s progress.
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- Healthy Waterway Draws Crowds
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- ‘D’ Grade Report For Catchment
- Creek Project Hits A Milestone
Thank you very much South Burnett Online, The Friends of the Yarraman Creek Inc. sincerely appreciate the comprehensive press coverage which you always give to our small group of retired volunteers. The Queensland Landcare Awards are held every second year, and are organised and run by Queensland Land and Water Carers who represent, advocate, create networking opportunities, promote and insure NRM groups in Queensland. Without QW&LC, our small group would not exist, we could not afford private insurance.
There were two nominated Award Finalists in the 2017 Queensland Landcare – Fairfax Landcare Community Group category. We were honored to run second to the Noosa and District Landcare Groups Inc. Those living and working along the Queensland coast are lucky, as they can tap into large numbers of volunteers and obtain big grants in this wealthy region of our State.
For Yarraman to be placed in this league is truly wonderful for a small rural timber town. We were awarded $200 which will go to three signs placed around the project site.
We hope that this recognition of our work will promote tourism in our region and assist with the economic recovery of our beautiful small town.
We were delighted to represent our group at the Toowoomba Regional Councils “Volunteer Recognition of Service Morning Tea” on Monday, November 27, and be included in the TRC Partnership Groups.