Gembrook Park Erosion Work

I've been tonight to the Friend's of Gembrook Park AGM. I have been Treasurer for some years so I needed to report on the year's expenses and income. There's not much to the job as we have only half a dozen on the committee and only a couple of dozen transactions so the paperwork is minimal. It's an incorporated committee of Cardinia Council and we receive a five hundred dollar annual grant for expenses. We only have one or two meetings a year and most of the committee's work in the park is in the form of weekly working bees for a couple of hours on Thursdays, which I don't attend. I do a bit down there now and again in my own time, and I assist secretary Merle here and there conferring with discussion should she contact me. Merle is the driver of the group.

I am happy tonight following the meeting as our council liaison man showed us before, after and in progress slides of the erosion control works in the gully which commenced in April and were recently completed. Gembrook Bushland Park is a 29 hectare remnant of native vegetation that has never been cleared. Bushfires burnt much of it in the 1920's but is has escaped burning since then. It suffered from run off and silt from farmland to it's north, and storm water from the town introducing weeds for many decades prior to 2000 but erosion of the gully cranked up with the development of the farmland between the reserve and the main road, which came after the land was rezoned from agricultural to residential. The increase in storm water was multiplied something like four times, being channeled into the same gully with appalling result. We as a Friend's group expressed concern over about a ten year period, and after much public anger and frustration at meetings where consultant's recommendations were tabled, and dispute and indecision and argument over various options presented, at last when council managed to get a some state government financial assistance, the project commenced.

Works of about $80,000 were done last year on the water retarding basin above the park, and about $120,000 this year on piping the outfall from the basin about 80 metres down the gully and past the erosion head to a point that has been stabilized by rock, concrete, soil and revegetation. The gully back up from the erosion head has been replanted with thousands of plants through 'geo matting' and the job has been done with minimal disruption to tree ferns and other vegetation. Furthermore, a very old and huge mountain ash tree that was likely to soon fall over because of the erosion has most probably been saved (touch wood).

The pipes are designed to take all the water, that is in less than in a one in five year rain storm, underground to the point below the head where the gully levels and spreads out and a small creek begins from a spring. In a one in five year event the water will cascade over the top of the ground as it always has. Everyone is hoping a one in five doesn't happen in the near future so that the vegetation establishes well enough not to be washed out. A few years would be good but the longer the better.

We are all so pleased that the work has been done so well and indications are that it'll work, provided we don't get a huge storm any time soon. The contractor is engaged to come back every month for twelve months to keep the plantings weed free and spray deterrent on the plants to repel wallabies from eating them out. After years of watching the damage happening and lobbying as a group, it does restore some confidence in local government engineers and environmentalists to see such good positive work done. Even if it never probably should have been necessary, had appropriate planning and initial safeguards happened.