Last Saturday, Bangalee Bushcare held a major planting event to mark the 2018 Sustaining Landcare Week.

A total of 14 people attended the event, helping with everything from planting trees, making tree cages, watering and cooking. Through everyone's fantastic efforts, nearly 150 Lomandras were planted in the eastern gully to prevent further erosion while about 220 trees and shrubs were planted, caged and watered in the flatter areas around the gully. The volunteers contributed at total of 70 person-hours of work on the day! Well done!!!

Some of the species planted include:
Sydney Blue Gum
Woollybutt
Blackbutt
Angophora
Turpentine
Callistemon
Melaleuca
River Lomatia
Lilly Pilly
Red Ash
Red Cedar
White Cedar
River Oak
She-Oak
Koda
Plum Pine
Black Plum
Guioa
Maiden's Blush
Illawarra Flame Tree
Toothed Daisy Bush

Over the next few months, Bangalee Bushcare's regular volunteers will continue to water all the new plants as well as put in another 250 in various areas around the eastern gully.

It has been a while since our last blog post. Not that we haven't been busy though. Over the past three months, the volunteers at Bangalee have worked almost exclusively on the lantana on the downstream end of the picnic ground. We had made some initial progress in this area last year but did not focus on it until the cooler weather came along.

Continuing east from last year's planting area, we have now cleared 0.8 hectares of dense lantana and revealed a severely degraded gully. We generally followed our three step process, namely poison the lantana first, pile it up and dig out all the roots, and then burn the remains. Clearing the 0.8ha actually took less time than we initially thought - the effectiveness of glyphosate and fire!

As part of National Landcare Week, we will be hosting a major tree planting event. In total, we will be planting over 500 plants ranging from eucalypts and rainforest trees to erosion-stopping lomandras. The goal is to get a diverse range of plants into the otherwise bare area in order to kickstart the natural regeneration process.

The tree planting day will be on Saturday 18 August 2018 from 8am (for a 9am start) until sometime after lunch. There will be something for everyone to do whether it be digging holes and putting in plants or setting up cages and watering. Or if none of that sounds like you, just come along for the company! Tea, coffee and a BBQ lunch will be provided for anyone who wants to come along.