I held my annual Clean Up Australia Day event along the beautiful stretch of beach at Glenelg North, the nearby Patawalonga Lake. Thank you to everyone who volunteered and in particular the wonderful Glenelg North community.
Both the beach and the lake play a significant role in many people’s active lifestyle – either walking running or riding as well as just taking time to enjoy the scenic views.
The Patawalonga Lake is at the end of the Sturt Creek which starts off in the Hills but eventually makes its way through to Glenelg. The water is litter free where the Sturt Creek starts in Coromandel Valley.
But as you start going through housing along the way to Glenelg more and more litter and waste appears in the creek that has been washed into it via stormwater drains.
Where the Sturt Creek ends at the northern end of the Pat, there is a floating barrier which tries to capture as much of this waste, a lot of it plastic.
The Leader of the Opposition when he was the Environment Minister in the former Liberal Government was the first Government in Australia to Ban Single Use Plastics to stop plastic entering the waste stream in the first place.
However, when there are big rain events and unfortunately some of the waste does find its way into the Pat and eventually into the ocean where it can wash up on the beach at Glenelg North, Glenelg and Glenelg South.
My family and I also live near the beach in Glenelg South and volunteer at the Glenelg Surf Lifesaving Club, so we understand the importance of protecting our pristine coastline and keeping our beaches beautiful.
Since being elected in 2018, I have held annual Clean-Up Australia Day events on the beach in Somerton Park, Glenelg South and Glenelg.
This year on a beautiful sunny day on Sunday March the 3rd I held a Clean-Up Australia Day event at Glenelg North.
Thank you to my team made up of Simone, Hugh and Rubie who helped me set up a marquee at Tarniwarra Reserve on the foreshore at Glenelg North where community members could come along and collect a rubbish bag and some gloves to then go off and clean up any litter they could find.
Most of the volunteers who came along were locals who knew about the Clean Up event but with the coast park going past the marquee it was fantastic to find a number of people from outside Glenelg North going for a walk being inspired to take a bag with them and clean up
Additionally it was fantastic to have such a large number of Young Liberals come out and being so energetic they were able to cover so much of the local area.
The clean up volunteers went off in all directions. Some went along the beach all the way up to the walkway to West Beach combing both the shoreline and also the rockwall where a lot of the litter gets washed into.
Others took the higher ground and went along the coast park that runs along the esplanade.
A number walked across to the banks of the Pat and cleaned up on the banks and also in the grass areas that line the Pat.
I spread my effort first at Tarniwarra Reserve, then along a stretch of the beach before heading along King Street to meet up with volunteers cleaning up at the Pat.
While at first glance these areas looked clean it was surprising how many small pieces of litter were lying around. Some of it was more obvious, along King St I picked up someone’s left overs from a Maccas run that unbelievably had just been dropped on the ground, the paper bag, serviettes even the receipt!
Along the Pat, there was a distinct line in the grass of predominantly small plastics that had been deposited at the high water line of a past storm.
Overall we were able to pick up 10 bags of rubbish, leaving both the Glenelg North beach and Patawalonga cleaner than we started.
The volunteers included:
Susan and Peter Ali,
Marianne and Robert Harding,
Graeme and Tania Poole
Janet Hillgrove
Laura and Richard Stranger
Irina Glass
Special mention to Brooke Birkby and her fantastic children Olive, Darcy and Mabel
And of course all the Young Liberals that came out in force.
Thank you to everyone who came along to clean up Glenelg North on Clean Up Australia Day and for making a difference locally by taking practical action as a community.
