A Milestone Worth Celebrating
By Vanessa Gimellaro, Macarthur Local Landcare Coordinator
Over the past 14 months, the Wollondilly Shire community has rolled up its sleeves, pulled on gloves, and made a real difference to the health of our local environment. Greater Sydney Landcare’s Restoring Catchment & Community Resilience program—as part of a partnership between Great Eastern Ranges and Amazon Web Services—has now completed its initial works. What a journey it’s been!
Together, we’ve cleared an impressive 53.92 hectares of invasive weeds, opening up space for native plants to flourish and allowing wildlife to move more freely through our beautiful landscapes. This work has not only improved biodiversity but also strengthened the resilience of our catchments.
One of the most exciting outcomes has been the ripple effect through the community. We’ve seen surrounding landholders step up to join the effort. A great example is the Office of Strategic Lands, which is now actively clearing Arundo donax and other weeds from their site just upstream of our Douglas Park Weir site. Thanks to this collaboration, we are now managing weeds along a 2 km stretch of the Nepean River—twice as much as initially planned.
Our planting efforts have been equally inspiring. We planted 15,700 native plants across eight key sites, including: the wildlife carers food forest at the Australian Wildlife Sanctuary, riparian zones along Stonequarry Creek in Picton, and at the Douglas Park Weir, a private property bordering Lin Gordon Reserve in Thirlmere, and at our newly built Firewise Educational Garden in Buxton. Most of these plants were lovingly grown from local seed by volunteers at the Robin Davies Community Nursery in Picton.
Speaking of volunteers, we couldn’t have done it without the 170 individuals who contributed a total of 781 volunteer hours. We learnt new skills and shared plenty of laughs along the way. We learned to identify and remove riparian weeds like Arum Lily, and we tackled erosion using leaky weirs, coir logs, sandbagging, meshing, and strategic planting.
We also got hands-on with firewise gardening, building a dry-stacked wall and learning about local plants that could stop fire spreading. We took a deep dive into eucalypt and native grasses identification. One of the most exciting innovations was discovering the hollow hog method of creating wildlife hollows. We constructed 15 new hollows in Lin Gordon Reserve, and just six weeks later, they were already being used by local fauna!
While I may be slightly biased, I can honestly say the feedback from our events was overwhelmingly positive. We learned a lot, achieved even more, and had a great time doing it. I’m incredibly proud of every single person who contributed.
Now we enter the maintenance phase, which will continue for the next five years. I’ll be inviting everyone back to revisit the sites. Not just to continue the work, but to reflect on what we’ve accomplished together. A little bit of effort really can make a big difference.
Thank you all for your passion, your time, and your belief in what we can achieve as a community.
Best Wishes,
Vanessa Gimellaro, Macarthur Local Landcare Coordinator
