Project: Rehabilitating the river access point.
Objective: Restore the access point to its natural beauty through revegetation of the banks.
Benefits:
- Reintroduce native habitat.
- Support biodiversity.
- Enhance community and visitor appreciation.
- Long-term impact: Generations to come will enjoy the restored. beauty of the rehabilitated river access point.
Acknowledgements: Mackay Regional Council
Queensland Department of Environment and Science for providing grant funding through Community Action Sustainability Grants 2023 (Round 7)
The importance of riparian habitat: Riparian means land which borders a water body such as a river. The riparian zone protects the ground and water from erosion, sediment run off, and pollution. It also provides important and diverse habitat for wildlife, with multiple food plants, shelter for many different species, and shade to keep the water temperature more constant.
Did you know:
· The word riparian comes from Latin “Ripa” meaning river bank.
Happy #landcareweek
Thank you to every single one of our incredible volunteers who attended our first planting day at Edward Lloyd Park, Marian, 8th August 2023, including 100 students and teachers from Marian State School
Big shout out to Vintage Kiss at Melba House for keeping everyone well nourished and caffeinated for today’s activities, as well as generously providing a $25 voucher for one lucky volunteer – the winner will be drawn this week! 
Special mention to our PCL field officers for drilling the holes, setting out the plants, and helping all the volunteers and kids to make it a successful, enjoyable, educational and fun day. 
We look forward to future meet ups, events and inspired action taking place at this locally significant site by the Pioneer River, as together we transform this area into a beautiful nature refuge for the whole community to enjoy.
Update 1:
On January 11th, in the hot and humid conditions with imminent rain threatening, the PCL team and loyal volunteers met at the Melba House revegetation site. After the Christmas break and all the warm and wet weather we have had, the weeds had grown enough to hide the plants! In a little under 2 hours, our wonderful volunteers and experienced field officers had managed to get the site under control using a combination of hand pulling and brush cutting the weeds. Most of the guinea grass was hand pulled which will make future control easier. We have also had an explosion of weed vine growth including stinking passionflower (Passiflora foetida) and siratro vine (Macroptilium atropurpureum), much of which was also hand pulled. The plants have grown fantastically well, unfortunately, some have disappeared which is disappointing when local school students and volunteers were responsible for much of the planting.
Update 2:
Our second working bee of 2024 at the Pioneer river bank revegetation site dawned hot and humid again. We were blessed with a dry morning, but it certainly heated up extremely quickly. This month saw us weeding around the base of each plant, we’ve certainly had good growing weather, so the plants have grown big and strong – unfortunately, so have the weeds! Great success from last month’s working bee though – the area around each plant was still relatively weed free so we rolled back the vines and pulled out some Guinea grass which gave a clear zone around the plants so they wouldn’t get accidentally damaged by the brush cutter. A platypus was also seen in the river by John as he was hand pulling the weeds. This was extremely exciting – even more so because on our recent platypus count at broken River, he hadn’t seen any at all! It just goes to show how much wonderful wildlife we have in our area and how much benefit projects such as this, that increase habitat, improve water quality, and increase biodiversity, are to our beautiful region.
Huge thanks to our amazing volunteer, John, who turned up to help us weed around the 500 plus plants before our awesome Field Officer, Mitch, turned up to complete the weed control with a brush cutter. Great job everyone!
Reminder – we will be out again next month on Wednesday 6th March. Come and enjoy a bit of nature, coffee, and a chat, whilst benefitting the environment.
