ALBAA Clean Up Australia Day 2009 North Coast Environmental Actions

Catherine Hill Bay - 1 March 2009

Maintaining consistency ALBAA members Shad Baker and Mark Williams turned out to Catherine Hill Bay with low expectations after our recent events there. What they were greeted with was a welcome surprise. The area was in even better condition than it was left in after Kurt and Shad got in there a few weeks earlier!!

There’s always more to do here so Mark and Shad (with family in tow) Summer, Josh and Joel concentrated their efforts on the top of the Ledge making another substantial dent in the glass situation there. A big thank you to all involved and to those that are taking care at Catherine Hill Bay, great to see!

Munmorah State Conservation Area - 1 March 2009

ALBAA Ledge Care Co-ordinator Christian Gough took on two major sites for Clean Up Australia Day (CUAD); Snapper Point and Wybung Head. The event attracted seven members of the public who registered through the CUAD website.

Wyong City Council got in early on in the piece stating that the rocky headland areas were off limits to members of the public for this event and spent some time further defining the areas in which they would accept our operations.

As is often the case these days, this type of concern is liability driven and although ALBAA members are able to operate within the inter tidal areas, due to the Association seeking appropriate insurance’s early on in the piece, members of the general public (falling under CUAD or local Council’s care) are not. To the ALBAA crew this example shows the importance of ‘Ledge Care’ working closely with CUAD to fill in the gaps and see a good result for the headland areas as well as their surrounds.

With this in mind Christian took the initiative early and got down to Wybung before the volunteers arrived to have a look around and see how the ledge had faired since our last visit. The result was an outstanding ‘Not to badly at all!’. Since our initial efforts at Wybung the area has remained in a great condition and that result makes it hard to draw a comparison to Snapper Rock less than five minutes up the road. An astute mind will quickly realise that one place is a short walk and easy access the other is a bit of a hike and a climb. This just shows how lazy the worst litterers are!

On return to the car park at Snapper Christian found his small army of volunteers waiting. A quick re-think of our usual strategy saw Christian getting the younger ones involved by cleaning up the car park and track fringes before heading out onto the ledge for a bit of a chat with the guys fishing there. Net result of this little excursion was two full Clean Up bags and a car battery. To add a little more fuel to the fire it looks like the ALBAA crew might have to get back in there and clean the caves out (a pretty rock pool will quickly turn into festering mess when you throw some dead fish in there!)... It’s just not the sort of thing you can ask guests to do!

Back at the car park and the volunteers had managed to build a pyramid of beer bottles that when carefully loaded into the clean up bags bought the event tally to thirteen! A few other articles featured:

The butts of a couple of cheap 10 foot spin rods, a spare wheel from a vehicle that had been burned at the top car park (later finding its way onto the Ledge following an unsuccessful chopper lift before finally being removed from the park) and a massive pile of beer bottles, bourbon and coke cans.

If anyone wondered why this National Park closes its gates at dusk then the burnt out cars and 13 clean up bags full of beer bottles should provide an insight.

At the end of the morning a great result was achieved for the area with the promise of more to come from the Central Coast and Lower Hunter ‘Ledge Care’ crew in the near future.

Central Coast Ledge Care team

Avoca - 1 March 2009

Clean Up Australia Day 2009 and South Avoca was always going to see a bit of 'Ledge Care' tender love and care. ALBAA members Christian Gough, Gavin Beveridge, Chris and Finn Grant were on site to make it happen.

The situation at Avoca was found to be much the same as it always is with the guys removing three solid Clean Up bags full of rubbish. It was impressive to note that not all of this was really fishing related and a lot of it was general litter you might expect to find at the end of a good house party. Once again plenty of bottles, food containers, newspapers, and discarded clothing (now this one is really hard to fathom, clothes are expensive!).

What was really great to see is Chris teaching the next generation of fishermen the right way from the start getting young Finn involved (who incidentally is a Marlin fisherman not a Bass fisherman, just ask him!)