Clean Up time

Clean Up Australia Day Barrm Birrm 2020

 

March 2020

Riddells Creek Landcare held its fourteenth Clean Up Australia Day in Barrm Birrm, first Sunday in March. We had Scouts and Cubs from 1^st Riddells Creek Scouts along, and Gill Williams and her crew got a good haul.

Picking up other people’s rubbish is an exercise in civic responsibility, and an education. What people drop in the bush is astonishing. Stubbies tossed out car windows; energy bar wrappers; prunings from the garden; broken tiles and mortar. Great chunks of concrete.

As you know, Barrm Birrm is that lawless bit of bush at the top of Gap Road. It’s actually private property, a subdivision from the 1970s where people never had permission to build, but hoped that might change. It hasn’t and it won’t. It’s illegal to dump rubbish there, but the owners aren’t around, so if you’re too lazy to put that garden waste in your green bin, or too cheap to take that rubble to the tip and pay, you can go and dump it there.

Preaching about the bad consequences for the bush probably won’t make a difference if you’ve taken the trouble to drive in over bad tracks, maybe with a trailer, to do the drop off. You’ve already got a pretty solid ‘up yours’ attitude. You’re stuffing up a natural ecosystem, a beautiful thing that took a long time to make itself, but hey, what you want comes first, doesn’t it?  

Lecturing won’t make a difference, but what will make a difference is people who do give a damn showing up once a year to clean up the bad behaviour of the selfish. To the good folk who showed up this year – our profound thanks, and see you next year.

And to the other adults in Riddell, put it in your diary – first Sunday in March, 10-12 am, Gap Rd and Royal Parade. Every year.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare