Upper catchment target for support
The importance of the Wimmera’s fragile upper catchment and the role it plays in landscape-scale health is providing motivation for profound and ongoing ACE Radio network support.
The Geoff and Helen Handbury Foundation, in conjunction with ACE Radio, The Weekly Advertiser and radio stations 3WM and MIXX FM, allocates thousands of dollars for Landcare efforts across the region every year.
The upper-catchment areas of Ararat and Stawell district and Project Platypus Landcare network are among primary targets for financial support and backing.
Involving three $60,000 instalments over three years, a $180,000 agreement between the foundation and Project Platypus is in its second year and freeing other financial resources for critical on-ground work.
The condition of the upper Wimmera catchment is vital to the environmental and productive health of much of western Victoria.
The catchment represents the starting point of a natural arterial water-gathering and distribution network that stretches from the Pyrenees, gathers pace from the Grampians and continues through the Wimmera to beyond the terminal lakes of the southern Mallee.
The overall wellbeing of the system, including all its tributaries and distributaries and associated land, towns and communities, is fundamentally reliant on the health and vitality of the upper catchment. This is the case despite the area rarely being home to large stores of permanent water.
Sections of the catchment were historically subject to major land-clearing – some of it to feed a burgeoning Melbourne industry of yesteryear – and subsequent widespread degradation has led to serious erosion, silting and salinity issues.
The area has, in relatively modern times, been a primary target area for large revegetation and engineering projects, many of them organised by Project Platypus community Landcare groups and overseen by Wimmera Catchment Management Authority. But work needed to restore or maintain an environmental balancing act is significant and ongoing.
The name Project Platypus for a network overseeing 11 Landcare groups is based on an iconic inhabitant of the upper catchment that can only thrive when environmental circumstances are in balance.
Project Platypus manager Allister Stephens said it was paramount people had an appreciation and understanding of how the region’s natural catchment system worked.
“It is a massive area and managing the catchment is more than simply looking after eco-systems and bushland. It’s about sustainability in farming, water supply, settlements and communities,” he said.
“This funding through the foundation supported by ACE Radio network for a critical part of the Wimmera catchment is fantastic. It basically consolidates the management side, enabling us to do so much more.
“It’s about having that security and not having to pull money out of everything else.
“Much of it is about embracing not only what the catchment needs, but also the people engaged in land management, and obviously the broader community. Everyone in the region benefits from what we do.”
Alternative planting
Project Platypus is busy piecing together an alternative planting schedule for its annual largescale July plantout program.
“It’s going ahead in some form, we’re just working through the details. People can keep an eye on our website for updates,” Mr Stephens said.
Project Platypus is seeking further corporate and philanthropic support from the broader community to ensure its long-term future.
The Geoff and Helen Handbury Foundation and ACE Radio also have a long history of financially supporting Landcare efforts in Hindmarsh and Yarriambiack, as well as Ararat, Northern Grampians and Horsham municipalities.