Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about Blackadder Creek, which is a tributary that runs from the edge of the Midland town site within my electorate and feeds into the Swan River. The Blackadder-Woodbridge Catchment Group Inc. look after this section of Blackadder Creek, ensuring both its pristineness and the survival of the vegetation, plant life, frogs and water life that live within that catchment area. They weed and have extensively revegetated the area, all without using any chemicals or pesticides—and that is what they are most proud of.

I had an invitation to walk around the area and to hear what they did as a group and about their passion and their commitment on an annual basis, particularly at different times looking after the singing frogs, which are in a section of that part of the creek. I heard that the issue of rubbish coming from the town centre and the feeding into the creek of discoloured water were identified as one of the major challenges for the group. Following that, I also had a meeting with the Viveash Community Association, looking at the rubbish in the creek, and I got a commitment on the opportunity of working together as a community and on people from my office contributing to a clean-up in that region.

So, on Saturday, 27 August at 10 am, we all arrived and assigned tasks, and we allocated a section of Blackadder Creek to each of the groups. What was tremendous was that there were somewhere between 30 and 40 people of all ages who turned up and were committed to cleaning up that section. The state MLC Alyssa Hayden was in attendance. As a member of the upper house she was very keen and got stuck into the work with everyone else in the different sections. The City of Swan supplied the gloves and bags and a point of collection for the rubbish.

What was interesting was what we found. There were laptops. We found a bike that was in fairly good condition. There were syringes and general rubbish, particularly a lot of building material and heavy-duty plastic choking up a creek that had important life within it. What was interesting was watching people work together—those that would lean into the water and pull out the cans and the large pieces of metal that had been thrown in. The conversations were around their pride in contributing to the cleaning up of a significant tributary into the Swan River. The owners of Brookwood Realty in Midland, along with their staff, came down and participated. Also present were staff and students from La Salle College, the Viveash Community Association and the Forrestfield United Soccer Club. A local councillor, Ted, also joined us in the clean-up on the morning, and my own staff member Mary-Anne Reid coordinated the activity.

It was interesting when we finished to see the camaraderie and the commitment to making sure that in the future we would devote some time and energy as a group to assisting both the associations that look after Blackadder Creek and to making sure that the event would occur again. We agreed that part of our obligation to the environment was not only to regenerate but also to clean up. It is interesting to see how in this day and age people are quite happy to let plastic bags fill some of our waterways in a manner that is counterproductive and that clogs the weeds and builds up that accumulation. The other challenging element for us was finding the number of syringes that we did. Nevertheless, the community was prepared to clean up an area that they hold very dear and that is also recognised as having a sacred element to the Nyungar people.

The combination of all of the community fostered a really good sense that the contribution that we want to make to the environment within that region will continue to grow and be the focus. In the very near future we will look at the area in Viveash and extend our work from Blackadder Creek to the relevant areas where our community as a whole will pull together to look after those things that are important so that we leave an endowment for our children.