More than just a Course - by Narelle Thomas (a digital story from the Lake Illawarra MAP Project)

MENTOR WRITER: Julie Keys
SYNOPSIS: The story of the start of bush care at Coomaditchie lagoon.
SCRIPT: It began as an off campus TAFE course. There were ten of us.
Tina Bain was our teacher and she was just great, she took us on excursions and opened our eyes to many things about bush regeneration and caring for the environment.

We wanted to do more than just a course. We wanted to create our own employment, jobs that suited us.

Our place is the Coomaditchie Lagoon. Its the area of our people, The old Camp, our people past and present; our hunting grounds, our pathways to the oceans.
The work had to be done in 6 months. It began.

First the removal of infectious weeds, bitou, lantana, Madeira, Moth Vine and invading
grasses. We went in with Machetes, loppers, saws and axes. It was a jungle, when you cut through it you never knew what natives you would discover.

With that finished we began to plant thousands of natives and spread tonnes of mulch to the bare hill and lower areas on the sides of our lagoon.

Thirst was our next issue.

After this came the trail - Boxing each day ready to lay cement for our path, crawling on our knees, the dumpy truck taking out tonnes of weeds- Wheelbarrows with ropes tied on them helping to pull them full of wet cement to areas where the trucks could not get. It was arduous.

Retaining walls, seats for the public all
completed. We were done and very pleased with the accomplishment.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• digital story
• coomaditchie lagoon
• bush care
• tafe
• indigenous