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The
Vision
The members of Petrie Creek
Catchment Care Group share
the vision that the Petrie
Creek catchment will become
a stable, self-repairing and
self-sustaining natural
resource, providing
ecological, social and
economic benefit for the
present and future
generations
Click here for ~
Membership Application
Form
Click
here for:-
AGM
Reports 2008 |
The Petrie Creek Catchment Care Group
is a dynamic community group that deals
with integrated catchment issues
relating to Petrie Creek and its
tributaries.
The group has a management committee
that is inclusive of the broad spectrum
of users for this catchment, including
representatives from:
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Canegrowers and Lower Catchment
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Other Farming and Upper Catchment
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Landcare
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Waterwatch
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Maroochy Shire Council
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Nambour Chamber of Commerce
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Bli Bli Community Association
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Education
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Training
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The local community
We liaise with various government and
non-government bodies with issues
relating to the health and water quality
of the catchment. Membership
currently stands at over 50 financial
members with over 160 people on our
mailing list. The group is active
and dynamic with regular working bees
and workshops. The group also
currently employs a part-time education
officer, and revegetation officer, and
nursery coordinator. This enable
the many initiatives listed below to
flow smoothly and also gives a sound
base for these activities.
* Monthly water testing at various
sites along the catchment
Catchment Maps
* Revegetation on degraded banks
throughout the entire catchment, and
establishing management plants.
* Revegetation with
Corrective Service workers.
* Education on healthy
waterway, and integrated catchment
management issues
* Dealing with litter and stormwater issues
* Designing, implementing
and utilising a community nursery.
The PCCCG shares an office with
Waterwatch at ~
Maroochy Catchment Centre
Behind the Uniting Church
Off Donaldson Rd
Nambour Qld 4558
This office space is an important asset
for the group, allowing people to walk
in off the street and talk to the many
volunteers about issues they may have
concerning the catchment. This
office space is also used for the many
meetings held throughout each month.
Financial assistance is an ongoing need.
Not only does initial creek
rehabilitation need ongoing support, the
work requires regular maintenance and
supplementary planting for the project
to be successful. Corrective
Service and Work for the Dole workers
currently provide the man-hours for some
of this work and the group holds regular
working bees and a regular maintenance
day to help maintain the revegetation.
However, to be as effective as possible,
the number of hours maintaining the
creek needs to be constant, and
delivered in a coordinated approach.
Finding the funding to deliver a
coordinated approach is difficult in
community natural resource management,
however the PCCCG has so far been
successful in obtaining some maintenance
funds.
Revegetation and maintenance also occurs
on private property, as we are all
affected by what occurs upstream.
It is about the local community getting
together to solve a communal problem,
i.e. the health now, and in the future,
of Petrie Creek.
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To Contact us
Maroochy Catchment
Centre
Donaldson Rd
(Old Ministers House
behind Uniting Church
Nambour Qld 4558
Ph: 07 5476
4777
Coordinator - Cerren Fawns
Mob: 0416 031 823
Postal address
PO Box 311 Nambour
Qld 4560
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Beautiful Petrie
Creek ©Chrissy Hardman
River Sweep 2006
Litter:
A 'Litter
Charter' has been written which outlines
the various 'hotspots' located
throughout the Nambour CBD along with
various actions or solutions. This
charter can be obtained by contacting
the PCCCG office
Clean-up Day -- Quota Park, Nambour
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Petrie
Creek Catchment Care Group:
The First Decade
Ten years ago,
about 100 people attended a public meeting
at Nambour RSL. This meeting was hosted by
Maroochy Waterwatch, Nambour Community
Association and Namba Landcare with the
support of the RSL with the aim of
‘galvanising community, business and
government support for the improvement of
the whole of Petrie Creek’.
To set the
scene: In the years before 1998, the Petrie
Creek Revegetation Group founded by John
Thompson and Garry Lawler started planting
on the town reaches between Petrie and Quota
Parks with assistance from local groups
including schools and scouts; Maroochy Shire
Council built the bikepath from the Arundel
Avenue bridge to Petrie Park; and
particularly in the headwaters of Petrie
Creek, land owners were rehabilitating
riparian corridors. In 1997 a controversial
weir was constructed in the Quota Park
reach.
Back to the
March 1998 meeting: Waterwatch monitors from
throughout the Petrie Creek catchment spoke
about their sites: they included Jim Cash,
Mick Kimball, Leo Phelan, Warren Venaglia,
Howard Prentis, Mark and Karen Douglas,
Sarah Stenberg. Officers from the Department
of Natural Resources and the Department of
Environment talked about river processes and
platypus respectively. They were followed by
Gerard Cavney (Environmental Services), John
Jolly (Engineering) and Magdy Youssef
(Planning) from Maroochy Shire Council.
Issues from the
floor were recorded on butcher’s paper and
used as a basis for a questionnaire later
posted out to those attending the meeting.
It was obvious from the comments made that
there was widespread concern about the
health and management of the creek.
Petrie Creek
Catchment Care Group developed from a follow
up public meeting held in April, with a
steering committee of 15 community,
industry/commerce, Waterwatch, education,
state and local government representatives,
appointed. Two of our current management
committee members, Frank Jenkins and Errol
Middlebrook, were on this committee.
Meetings were held at the Nambour Chamber of
Commerce rooms, regular Sunday morning
working bees were organised, a vision was
developed and grant funding was applied for,
and with the adoption of a constitution and
later incorporation PCCCG was on its way.
Milestones
include the initiation of the Petrie Creek
Rehabilitation Project with Corrective
Services and Council (still going after 10
years under the supervision of Garry Lawler
and Chris Jameson), success with Natural
Heritage Fund (later Envirofund) and local
council grants, the opening with Waterwatch
of the office in Centrepark arcade and more
recently the move to larger premises at
Amity House, the establishment of Florabunda
Bushcare Nursery at Laidlaw road, and the
Community Jobs Plan projects (now Skilling
Queenslanders for Work) funded by Department
of Employment and Training.
The history of
PCCCG is more than a dry list of milestones:
it’s a story of many people working
together, inspiring others and overcoming
their differences. The group owes much to
the wisdom and initiative of its dynamic
first President, Susie Chapman and her
strong and thoughtful leadership. Vernon
Flood, who came to the office as a volunteer
in 2001, brought order and transparency to
the book-keeping. Florabunda Bushcare
Nursery, vital to our vision of the
catchment as ‘a stable, self-repairing and
self-sustaining natural resource’, has
flourished thanks to the dedication and hard
work of Jake Hazzard, its first manager, and
his successor, Suzie Pearce, helped by
enthusiastic volunteer seed-collectors and
propagators. Frank Jenkins’ creative talents
have produced the distinctive PCCCG logo,
annual calendars featuring his photos of
Petrie Creek and also many poems about the
creek. Vital to the health of both the group
and the creek has been Co-ordinator Cerran
Fawns, with her cheerful enthusiasm, grant
application writing skills and management
expertise.
Ten years
ago, one hundred people met in Nambour to
talk about their local waterway. Since then
many hundreds of people have contributed to
rehabilitating Petrie Creek – for the
strength of PCCCG is its volunteers
throughout the catchment who work quietly
away in the office, at Florabunda, with
school students, and on the banks of our
favourite creek. |
The PCCCG facilitates several
sub-groups and projects
Florabunda Nursery:
This community nursery is
coordinated by a committee. The committee meets
once a month to discuss any shadehouse and revegetation
issues.
The shadehouse was erected in
2001, at the end of
Laidlaw Rd. Woombye.
Community members regularly collect native endemic seeds
which are propagated in the shadehouse facilities.
These plants are then used for the many ongoing and new
revegetation projects in the Petrie Creek Catchment.
The shade house has supplied thousands of plants for
these activities since the completion of the facilities
in March 2001. Plants are also available for
sale to the public
The part-time revegetation officer
also reports to this group. The officer is aware
of the many complex issues surrounding the degraded
areas of the catchment, and works with the community in
designing, implementing and offering assistance in
revegetation projects. |
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