OUR EVENTS: Clean up Australia Day May
The event set for 5 March had to be cancelled due to high fire threat and postponed till 15 April as astronomy night that was cancelled due to cloud. But the clean-up was again cancelled at the last minute due to predicted damaging winds at Reid’s lookout with a wet and very cold front due to pass across the State. However: Finally! Finally we were able to undertake a clean-up day in lieu of our contribution to Clean up Australia Day. As most would know we avoid the designated clean-up day as it falls on the long week end in March so we allocate the following Saturday. All good on Friday morning, so I collect the pack of gloves, bags, high vis jackets etc from PV and complete the necessary paper work only to be informed soon after that the Saturday was just declared as a Total Fire Ban. Quite correctly your executive made a hasty decision to cancel/postpone. April was decided as a substitute day; again all went well and on the Friday morning I collect the equipment and paper work, but this time our secretary, Alison, became aware of wind warnings of 100km on the Grampians for Saturday morning. Again the executive had to err on the side of safety and defer. So it was, that Saturday May 13 finally became our clean-up day and it turned out to be most successful. I do acknowledge the patience of Hannah at PV for facilitating the collection of the equipment and its return on three occasions. The morning was such a lovely one for mid-May on the top of the Grampians at Reeds Lookout and the small group relished the sunshine while they got on with the job. We cleaned the carpark area, up to the fire tower, the walk to the balconies and then the road down to the rotunda. As has been seen previously there was lots of tissue paper around the carpark area and up the walk. It would seem this is good evidence to support the call for toilets at this location. As could be expected there was the usual collection of stubbies and aluminium cans plus wrappers from all sorts of food stuffs. It is in my opinion horrifying to have to scoop up disposable nappies but I did encounter a couple, surely people could dispose of these more appropriately. A large proportion of the rubbish collected came from the road way to the rotunda and we speculated that visitors may have enjoyed their picnic or whatever and just heaved the rubbish as they departed. Bottled water is clearly very popular but the number of discarded plastic bottles brings great discredit to some of those who drink this beverage. Many thanks to the small team who attended the clean-up, we actually had a very enjoyable as well as successful day. After a hand wash the team assembled at the rotunda where we ate lunch over a chat about future activities. Let’s hope our 2024 clean-up day is less of a drama.
STRUM