Welcome to this issue of the WSN Croaker, the final one for 2012. I am having trou-ble believing 2013 is just about with us. It has been a very busy year with so many great environmental events and I think every

man and his dog was doing a new management strat-egy’s and nearly every Government Department was asking the community to have its say on Waterway, Inva-sive Plants and Animals or Weeds. Even Local Govern-ment asked for our thoughts on Open Spaces & Recrea-tional areas (they all got few of my thoughts) This is great to see, but we will have to find out if they take note of what the community said.

November was full on for a band of our members doing the final organization of our inaugural Carp Muster, plus the tail end of meetings and events.

There are big new plans for 2013, as well as our usual environmental events which we attend or organise throughout the year. The WSN Croaker will still be pro-duced, but with a few changes, regular features and a few new writers so look out for the first issue in February 2013.

I would like to wish all of you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Also I hope that you get time to spend with loved ones and friends over this festive sea-son. My youngest son Adam is coming over from Perth he works for a gold mine company over there. Let’s hope he brings me something nice for Chrissie, shares would be good my other son David is working at the airport on designing fire safety so he will be busy no time off for him. Remember the best gift one person can give to an-other is to say “I Love You” because you just don’t know what is around the corner.

I guess I had better practice what I preach by saying:

I LOVE ALL OF YOU and wish to thank you for all the support, reading the Croaker, and the encouragement you have given to me over this past year and caring for the environment and our waterways.

Regards Diane Farmer Coordinator, WSN Restoring Our Waterways 04390 20448 diane.farmer@bigpond.com

PO Box 772, Wangaratta, Vic 3676

Now let me tell you about the great events I have at-tended and things that have been happening around town.

DRAFT VICTORIAN WATERWAY MANAGEMENT STRATEGY MEETING.

Monday 12th November.

I had really been looking forward to this meeting so I could find out what the plans were for water quality and invasive species management in waterways. There were about ten people there and there was a lot of information given out and a lot of questions asked (so much so that we never got to hear about the most important subject: invasive species in our waterways) so I have just had to do a lot of reading. I will let you know what it is all about and what’s happening in 2013.

NATIONAL RECYCLE WEEK VISIT TO RECYCLE CENTRE.

Thursday 15th November

What a great looking place, a lot different than the old centre. There was about 12 of us went along to check out the new $3 million VATMI recycle plant. They now have a great education room and the General Manager Mi-

chael Skudutis gave us information on the workings of the plant and what is meant to be put into your recycle bin. Paper, cardboard, glass bottles, plastic bottles plus anything that food & drink is packed in that has a recycle symbol that has a number in it. The information he gave us was great as I did understand a little more on what should be put in the bin. I was put to the test after the talk to sort out a pile of containers on the table and put in a

Contents

CLC Presentation Night 2

Carp Muster 3-5

Facilitated Planning Workshop 6

December, 2012 Issue #15

WSN Restoring Our Waterways CROAKER Newsletter Page 2

box what was recyclable. I passed with flying colours although Michael said to me on the quiet he would cough if I was going to make a mistake but I didn’t need him to cough. We then went out into the work area and I was amazed at the size of the machinery and the amount of recycled rub-bish but also what amazed me was the kind of things people recycle. I am pretty good at recy-cling and knowing what to put in the bin, my motto is if in doubt don’t put it in. Some members of the community have no idea, are lazy or just don’t know what to do with something so it goes in the recycle bin. Things that could go to the charity shops, and someone else might have been able to use them. Some other things have to be sent to bowser tip (which to me is wasting the workers and management time). I saw hun-dreds of children’s plush toys, hoses, dogs beds, laundry baskets, plant pots, cloths, mats, pots & pans and even a gas cylinder, you name it.

We were all dumbfounded, it is not that you can’t see on the lid of the bin what goes in and every household gets the infor-mation put into their letter box. I know school children are taught at school and most schools

practice recycling. Perhaps the school children should be in charge of the recycle bin at their homes.

It is good that a lot of the cans, bottles and other plastic products do get recycled. See piles of things ready to go behind the group photo al-though glass seems to be a bit of a problem. Glass is glass and can be recycled but crockery is crockery which can’t be recycled; it goes in the ordinary green bin. The good news is that thank goodness a lot of people know how to do it prop-erly otherwise the recycle plant would be out of business.

I do recommend that if you belong to a group or organisation, you organise a visit to the education centre and see if you can have a tour. I am sure the schools would be interested in an excursion also. Well done Heather Potter, Terry Corry, Mi-chael Skudutis and your workers for having this facility available to help our environment.

My hint for you: NO plastic bags in the recycle bin. Take them to the supermarkets and put them in the bin provided. Read the instruction on the lid of the bin and think before you put anything in the recycle bin.

CLC PRESENTATION NIGHT

Friday 16th November

I enjoy these evenings as you get to see all the great volun-teering the year 9 Community Leadership Challenge students have been doing over the se-mester and I am impressed by all their efforts. ROW’s students

Will, Lockie and Zane were all dressed up in blue shirts and a tie, but Nic was done up to the hilt in a nice black suit. Callum was not informed of the dress code for the evening but he still looked good. Nic presented me with a block of chocolate to say thank you and said they had flowers but had lost them (yeah right I thought). Not sure where Kyle was he might have had other plans.

Their presentation was one of the last for the evening so when they walked out I was relieved. When they explained all about working on our waterways and cleaning up the environment, talk-ing about the terrific carp fishing they did and the Carp Muster I was so proud of them. Working with the boys was great as, no matter what sort of project I asked them to do each week, they al-ways put their heart and soul into it. Well done guys, and keep on fishing!

The other day I received thank you letters from the students and it is great that all my efforts teaching them about caring for our waterways and environment were appreciated. One of the sentences was “I think you’re a lovely lady and you’re a very dedicated woman”, which brought tears to my eyes. Thank goodness I have a few month’s break till it’s time for the next lot of stu-dents (only joking).

HUEY AND LOUIE’S BEAT

Hello and welcome to another issue of Huey and Louie's Beat, I must first say how great the Carp Muster was. We caught a lot of those rascal carp! I would like to thank all of the Wanga-ratta Sustainability Network's volunteers and supervisors who helped on that day. I would like

to give Diane a extra thank you for all that plan-ning, and cooking the snags and burgers. it was a very great day! Right, now on some serious things, I have been down to the creek and i have been spotting heaps of people littering there (mostly school students). i have told them where all that rubbish goes to, and that I am a volunteer at Landcare and they picked it up and took it

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home!

Now i have some great news! Huey and Louie's Beat has an apprentice helper by the name of Rocco, our other dog who's only a two-year-old German Shepherd puppy, but he loves coming down to the creeks with Louie and me. So i thought that he might be an assistant, taking rub-bish out of the creek when it's a bit far out for me to get to. That's all I've got time for!

I hope everyone who reads this has a safe and happy Christmas and a great New Year for 2013. See you all next year.

CARP MUSTER

Sunday 25th November.

A perfect day: the sun was shining and a group of members were all organised and ready to go. We had about 80 people who registered that they were going to come. Once we were all

set up the keen carp catchers started to arrive and they just kept on arriving: from littlies to the well-matured from all over the place Wodonga, Albury, Beechworth, Rutherglen, Glenrowan and heaps from Wang. Each registered child re-ceived a gift pack and the adults were given a book on fishes or NEWater drink bottle and some of them received a pack of all sorts of goodies when they came past the information table beside the registration desk. There was a rushed shop-ping spree for more food as we had only ex-pected about 100. The children’s activities tent had a fishing competition set up for the little ones thanks to Sally Colson and there were lots of prizes up for grabs if they caught a fish in a pre-tend pond, and heaps of other things for them to do thanks to Joy Sloan also.

Pat Kuhle took off col-lecting rubbish along the Creek towards Perry Sreet and re-turned with a couple of bags full and then headed down towards

Roy Street bridge where she removed a sign from the creek. Hugh did a clean up removing a trolley under the Perry Street bridge and a car tyre near the Greta Road bridge as well as a couple of bags of rubbish. Thanks guys.

Once things settled down and everyone was reg-istered and sent on their way to start fishing I

went on a walkabout along the creek. Just past the Tone Road Bridge there were people all set up fish-ing so I spoke to each group as I came to them. Looking along a stretch of the creek

and seeing all the family groups and some in groups of two or three fishing looked great there was not much gap between some of them but they were all keen to get those pesky rascals (carp) as Hugh calls them out of One Mile Creek. Up near Wareena Wetlands, where the clinic tent was, Shane Crispin and gang were fishing. No carp were caught but Shane caught himself a dead cat skin that smelt to high heaven. A bit further along I came across a family where a little girl had caught the first carp and it was rather large: near as big as she was she was so excited so I took a family group photo. By the time I got back to Batchelors Green it was nearly time to start to barbeque lunch and ROW’s No 1 cook had arrived and was ready to go. About 11.30-ish the Carp catchers started to bring in their haul. Kelvin was measuring, Tony was entering the size and number caught into the computer, and it was all so exciting. Both barbies were on the go, one doing veggie burgers, fish and bacon & eggs and the other sausages, rissoles, onions and bacon. Alan and Jim cooked and three of us were serving at one barbie and the other barbie was flat out also. The food must have been OK as some people were coming back for seconds. Lunch was full on for at least an hour or so but once people’s tummies were full it was time for presentation of prizes.

Trevor Danger was the MC and introduced Adrian Wells who did a great talk on carp, and all the work that is being done along the Murray Dar-ling Basin to try and remove them from the river system to help our native fish sur-vive. It was then onto the presentation, I did a little

thank you to our sponsors and Trevor did the an-nouncing of the prize winners while Tony Lane (chairperson of WSN) and Adrian Wells from Murray Darling Association did the hand shaking. (A list of the winners and sponsors will be at the end of the article). Only one adult won a prize and that was for the most carp caught. All the other prizes were won by children, even the larg-est Carp caught. There was a lot of socialising and talking after the presentation and everyone had a great time and they asked if we could do it

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again next year, so that’s what we hope to do.

GREAT DAY GREAT FUN GREAT FISHING GREAT FOOD and a lot of togetherness to re-move carp from our waterways. “See you next year” were the words of a lot of people as they left.

We had about 204 people at the Event and those that were fishing removed 74 carp. Fantastic ef-fort, thanks!

There were about 20 plus volunteers working hard on the day in all different areas and I sin-cerely thank them for helping make the day such a success.

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO CAME ALONG TO MAKE THE DAY SUCH A FUN DAY. Not everyone caught a carp on the day but next year they just might.

It was a great Clean Up the World Event which put us on the World Map.

FUNNY STORY OF THE DAY

Alan & Denise went fishing downstream of the Phillipson Street bridge and they were going well catching four carp in a short time but they had a visitor come and join them it was Mr. Snake so they left

which made sense to me. Maybe next year they will find a spot where they can catch heaps and win the most carp caught without being disturbed by an unexpected visitor.

WIN-

NERS:

Largest Carp Caught: Griffin Fraser

Smallest Carp Caught: Bec White

Biggest Carp caught by the smallest entrant: Corey Marjanovic

Most Carp Caught: Peter Vozlic

Most Carp Caught by A Child under 15 years: Kyle Rettalack

Most Unusual thing caught: dead cat skin, by Shane Crispin

Most Rubbish Collected: Pat Kuhle

SPONSORS:

The Centre’s ABC (Act, Belong, Commit) program grant. Without this grant the Carp Muster which was a Free Event would not have been possible.

PRIZES VOUCHERS:

And Willie’s Fish and Chips

Appin Street Wangaratta

Special Thanks to Shirley O’Connor for the great flyer and printing them.

TURNER’S FISHING TACKLE

120-124 Greta Road

Wangaratta Vic,3677

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ADVERTISING:

ITEMS FOR PRIZE PACKS

AND CHILDREN’S ACTIVITIES:

MDBA Native Fish Strategy

Arthur Rylah Institute

Department of Sustainability and Environment

SUPPORT AND VOLUNTEERS:

Wangaratta Urban Landcare Group, Wangaratta Sustainability Network

North East Landcare, Murray Darling Association

The Centre’s Skillsbank and CARN, Wangaratta Visitors Information Centre.

Trevor Danger, Rowan O’Hagan, Tony & Donna Lane, Sally Carr, Shirley O’Connor Pat Stafford, Pat Kuhle, Cynithia Bresnehan, Sally Colson, Kylie Richens, Brian & Clair Luxford, Joy Slone, Alan O’Dae, Jim Dunn, Andy Kimber, Barb Bry-ant, Tony Bates, Gill Raynor, Gill Baker, Kelvin Barry, Boss O’Brien, Max Ellis, Troy & Dale Berry, Tania Toomey, Jerry Van Orsouw, Adrian Wells, Rowan O’Hagan, Hugh McGuire, Di Farmer, Jim Lewis and Peter Amor.

SPECIAL VOLUNTEER THANK YOU:

A very special person who moved to the area last January and her name is Sue Smith. She was matched up to our group through Skillsbank and she volunteered to assist and join WSN Restoring Our Waterways to organise the Carp Muster as she was experienced in organising large events, PR and newsletters when she was living in Mel-bourne. Her knowledge was excellent and she taught us all the things we needed to know which had us sharing the load and individuals taking on different responsibilities. The most important thing she showed us was that if Wangaratta Ur-ban Landcare Group, Wangaratta Sustainability Network, WSN Restoring Our Waterways Group and North East Landcare join forces the event will be a great success.

Wangaratta Sustainability Network and especially me would like to give our heartfelt thanks to her. Sue and her family have to move back to Mel-bourne so she will be sadly missed. One thing though, she has left her mark on us and will never be forgotten and will become part of our history.

Diane Farmer on behalf of W.S.N.

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For more information on WSN contact:

Rowan O’Hagan – Secretary

12 Deakin Court Wangaratta VIC 3677

Phone (03) 5721 8231

wangarattasustainability@mail.com

www.wangarattasustainability.org

Under the umbrella of the

Wangaratta Urban Landcare

Group

FACILITATED PLANNING WORKSHOP

Saturday 23rd February, 2013

A combined planning workshop with Wanga-ratta Urban Landcare Group and Wangaratta Sustainability Network will be held at The Cen-tre Chisholm St, Wanga-ratta from 8.30am till

noon with lunch supplied thanks to a grant through North East Landcare facilitator Trevor Danger.

A facilitated planning sessions with Moragh McKay, one of the best Landcare planning facili-tators in Australia.

This is a rare opportunity to put some solid plan-ning processes in to your Landcare group’s fu-ture.

A Landcare Group Action Plan articulates a shared vision about the future of a local area. It identifies tasks that need to be completed to real-ize the shared vision, and who will carry these out ‐ a blueprint for action.

An Action Plan is a way of communicating the Group’s ideas and needs to partners and inves-tors. It translates long‐term aspirations into tangi-ble, measurable actions that can be supported or funded by a variety of sources. It paves the way for the most efficient use of scarce resources.

Sitting down to plan helps to:

· Work through, agree on and prioritise issues and ideas to which resources can be directed;

· Identify alternatives to address the issues or realize the ideas;

· Develop solutions and practical projects.

An inclusive, participatory approach will improve these ideas and the likelihood that the plan will lead to effective action. A plan that reflects the consensus of landholders and residents provides strong support to the Group in bringing about

positive change in the environment, and is more likely to be taken seriously by partners and inves-tors.

Your plan will benefit from collaboration between members and partners, such as Local Govern-ment, Regional Water Authorities, VicRoads – in fact, any organisation involved in issues that mat-ter to the Group. Involving these people in the planning process can result in partners making commitments, in advance, to the implementation of the plan.

To summarise, a Landcare Group Action Plan can:

1. Build consensus amongst the Landcare Group membership on priority issues.

2. Establish specific objectives which are realistic and achievable and agreed upon by the mem-bers.

3. Identify projects and activities that can be un-dertaken to respond to these issues and objec-tives.

4. Agree on ways of implementing the plan and to assign tasks to appropriate people.

5. Communicate Group ideas and needs effec-tively with partners and investors.

Please let Di Farmer or Rowan O’Hagan know if you are interested in attending so we can keep you informed.

EVENTS TO COME:

Camping and Fishing Expo

Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th January 2013 at Apex Park