Forest Creek Revitalisation Project Grant

The recently received grant for the Forest Creek Revitalisation Project—Castlemaine under the Australian Government’s Urban Rivers and Catchments Program will be a major focus for 2025.  It will enable the partners [North Central Catchment Management Authority (NCCMA),  Mount Alexander Shire Council (MASC), Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), DJAARA, Friends of Campbells Creek (FoCC)  and Castlemaine Landcare Group (CLG)] to work together over the next 3 years to deliver a more natural stream and streamside within the channelised section of Forest Creek and additional upstream and downstream benefits to habitat and biodiversity.  NCCMA will manage this grant.

Under that grant, we will spread the CLG work from 2025-27 at –

• The Wilding Site behind Best Motors, between Patterson Bridge and Ten Foot Bridge, to enhance vegetation, improve access to viewing areas of the creek and monitor water quality and wildlife including aquatic species;
• The Indigenous Food and Fibre (IFF) site, expanding its upstream and downstream riparian treatments, creating a series of ponds and riparian areas to provide refugia for wildlife including Bibron’s toadlet and expanding informal walking and viewing along the creek;
• The lower section of the Montgomery Street grasslands, to reintroduce some threatened and rare species (note that we also anticipate a cultural burn by DEECA / DJAARA to the upper grasslands where there is kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra) but this is not part of the grant);
• The footbridge waterhole and surrounds, to increase aquatic habitat and species and provide a viewing path and additional planting to the currently hidden anticlinal fold area; and
• The junction of Moonlight and Forest Creeks, in the Copses area, to improve native grassland habitat.

FoCC will also be doing considerable work downstream, especially to reintroduce threatened species and protect platypus.
More of that as we go, but also will assume “weeding” is still part of the task, although it will be shared with contractors.

For 2025, we will also –

• Continue our work on the existing section of the IFF site, with a small planting – mainly grasses;
• Follow up, via a small planting by volunteers, on work to be carried out by DEECA along Moonlight Creek that will enhance an existing waterhole and place some tree trunks and limbs to slow water before it reaches the washaway; and
• Set up some citizen science opportunities for our volunteers.