SPRING EDITION ponderings Newsletter of the Moonee Ponds Creek Co-ordination Committee PO BOX 2170 Greenvale 3059 P 9333 2406 F 9333 2413 E [email protected] In this issue 2 “Butt’s” the word. The latest from the Keep It Clean Project 3 Be my friend what it means to care for the creek 4-7 Spring Planting Season 4 page spread—it’s huge! 8 Royal Park Wet- lands—the future’s looking clear for the Moonee Ponds Creek 11 Strathnaver grasslands—where have all the pretties gone? Kelvin Thompson, Member for Wills, is flanked by butt beauties Maddie (left) and Mel (right) for the launch of the Butt It Bin It campaign at North Melbourne Train station on October 1st . The campaign was organized by Nicolette Rose—Moonee Ponds Creek Keep It Clean project co-ordinator . She sure knows how to get a message across! More on Page 2 Regular co-ordinators ramblings... articles Welcome to the Spring edition of creeky stuff that’s been happening There are also more creeky 9 Creek Memories Ponderings, the third we have at MPCCC headquarters—read all events to be attended, including Kim and Pam ran produced since last year. As you about it! And there’s more to our upcoming November weed amok along the Five can see, we have swelled from an come…. walk where you get a chance to Mile Creek 8 to a massive 12 page spread explore the wonderful world of Recently we attended the launch this issue. This is mostly due to medicinal weedy herbs and of 10 People Like Us of Penola Catholic College’s the incredible response we had at course our annual Christmas Platypus Care— Source to Sea project, an exciting this Spring’s planting season; party. Details can be found on Looking out for Platy- pilot program initiated by Carolyn pus more than double the volunteers page 11. Layton with support from MPCCC turned up to plant triple the num- and creeky residents, including We have also been hard at work ber of plants than in the Autumn 12 Plant Star of the Julie Law & Vince Aitken. Sixty on our webpage & soon hope to planting season. Very inspiring! Season bring you an electronic version of year 9 students will be participat- Small-leafed Clema- We have been very lucky (and ing in special projects along the Ponderings by late November. In tis—A bush delicacy grateful) this season to have been Moonee Ponds Creek. They will colour! able to borrow fellow creek bud- form eight focus groups including: Thanks to all the MPCCC team & 12 Spring Sightings dies MCMC’s ute, affectionately the Oral Historians, Photographic helpers who worked so hard to Birds, birds, and more birds known as ‘Jackie’. Without her Historians, Water Quality, Bike make this planting season a suc- pulling our trailer we just couldn’t Safety, Frogs, and Media teams. cess: Elissa, Maddie, Nicolette & have done it. For the full details on We look forward to telling you Natasha, Steph & Dave. You’re 11 Upcoming the planting season, turn to page more about this project in the the best. events 4. It’s certainly kept us (and you) Summer edition of Ponderings. Melanie Taube , very busy, but there’s even more mpccc co-ordinator 2 it’s a load of of rubbish! Nicolette Rose gives us the low down on recent ‘eye-catching’ events from the Keep it Clean Project…. butt it bin it campaign As the creek’s very own garbage girl, I can tell you that there’s been plenty of action on the litter front of late! For those of you who haven’t seen the posters on your local train station, we’ve just launched our “No butts about it this is litter” campaign along the Broadmeadows & Upfield train lines. This has been a very exciting project and we have been working with a number of other organisations including M>Train, the Victorian Litter Action Alliance and EcoRe- cycle Victoria. The program aims to edu- cate smokers that throwing their butts away is littering and encourages them to do the right thing: butt it and bin it, in a bin or a personal ashtray. Apart from the posters, we’ve been giving personal ashtrays (made from recycled film canis- ters) to shops selling cigarettes near railway stations, these are to be given away to customers buying cigarettes. We will also be running drain stenciling activities around railway stations. The butt of a few jokes—Maddie shows how sad a discarded butt can be and what’s drain stencils more... “...litter goes down the drain and ends up in the creek, In other news, we have had On the event front, we held the launch of two fabulous drain stencil- something that is often forgotten!” the Sydney Road Community Fix Up ing kits developed. The project and a celebration for the success stencils feature the Moonee Ponds Creek swamp hen and are designed to be of the 2003 planting season. stenciled on the top of concrete drains pit lids. The message “care for our creek, rubbish lives in bins” is designed to reinforce the idea that litter goes down the The community fix up project has seen drain and ends up in the creek, something that is often forgotten! students from Brunswick Secondary Col- lege working with traders to develop so- One of the kits has been lutions to reducing cigarette butt litter donated to Brunswick Secon- along Sydney Road. The launch was dary College who are running held at Brunswick Town Hall on Fri- regular drain stenciling activi- th ties with students. The other day 24 October—more details in kit is available for use by Summer Ponderings. schools, community groups and councils. Moonee Valley Other projects in the pipe-line include a Council also has drain sten- sports ground litter project and of course ciling kits available for use by planning for plenty of clean up action for groups in Moonee Valley. Clean Up Australia Day in the new year. Stenciling is not only educa- If you would like more info about the tional, but great fun so let me Keep it Clean project or want to get know if you would like more Funky drain stencils showing the MPCCC involved please contact Nicolette on information. swamphen mascot will paint a clear message 9333 2406 or [email protected]. about stormwater and litter spring ponderings 3 someone to watch over me Since the winter issue of ponderings Andrew Gemmell’s call for carers of the creek was answered by some keen local residents who value their piece of the creek. The map shows where our current friends groups are spreading out along the creek and where people are volunteering to keep their eye on an area near where they live. Carolyn Layton is a teacher at Penola Secondary College in Broadmeadows. She tells us why she feels motivated to adopt a piece of the creek: I decided to 'adopt ' a section of the creek after reading Andrew's article in the last Moonee Ponds Creek issue. Since I have lived in Oak Park near the creek for the past few years, I decided Catchment to take on the section I most often walk Friends Groups & along. That's the bit between the footbridge near Strathmore North Primary School and ‘Adopted’ the next footbridge near the Oak Park Ten- Areas nis Courts. It's an interesting and varied section with great views and quite a lot of wildlife. It starts where the concrete fin- ishes. Incidentally, I've heard that it was an Oak Park resident years ago who very ac- tively and successfully opposed the march of the concrete further up the creek. My children and I have a few favorite parts in this section. One of these is the ford near the plant nursery where we often see a White-faced Heron looking for food. Once there was a native water rat swimming along the edge of the reeds when the water was high after rains, and at other times we 1 Friends of Upper Moonee Ponds Creek have recorded frog calls near here. Friends of the Sacred Kingfisher As for what it means to adopt a section, I 2 will probably keep doing some rubbish col- 3 Friends of Yuroke Creek lection and will keep an informal record of 4 Friends of Jacana Wetlands our wildlife sightings. I would like to take 5 Gowanbrae Residents Group part in Frogwatch again this spring and reg- ister the section for the Clean Up Australia 6 Boeing Reserve Troopers Day in March next year. I enjoy the thought 7 Friends of Strathnaver Grasslands of being part of a community of people look- 8 Strathoak Planters ing after the creek all along its length as the "adopt a section" idea is aiming to foster. If 9 Pascoe Vale Residents anyone is also interested in this section I'd 10 Friends of Moonee Ponds Creek be pleased to hear from you! 11 Travancore Residents Group Carolyn Layton 12 Friends of Lower Moonee Ponds Creek [email protected] As well as Carolyn the following people have volunteered to care for their patch of the creek: • Nina Eason will be keeping an eye on the area from Bass Street, Pascoe Vale near Lebanon Reserve to John Pascoe Fawkner Reserve • Lyndsey Burton will be adopting the area at Flemington Bridge near Dean Street, Moonee Ponds That’s approximately 4km of the creek between 3 people..12% of the total length!! As you can see from the map, there are plenty of areas in between friends groups that need a watchful eye.