Echo Report Year 9 Community Service – Melrose Rail Trail revegetation 2012

The year 9 Journey program included a significant service element which was formalised during the Term 2 Journey camps in the form of a half day of revegetation on the recently built Melrose to Wilmington rail trail.

This trail runs alongside the former Wilmington railway and is a relatively easy alternative to the Mt Remarkable foothills network of this mountain bike hot spot. Our role has been to restore something of the indigenous vegetation which in many sections has been eradicated.

The program began in 2011 with the cooperation of the District Council of Mt Remarkable, input from Greening Australia and this year with plants from Trees for Life, grown by an Old Scholar Greg Pech from Wirrabara( who also provided invaluable help on bridge design).

An initial limited time in 2011 expanded to 2 – 3 hours of work by our year 9 Journey groups, clearing, digging, planting and watering in 12-15 species along a 3 kilometre zone, from the Showgrounds end to the Camp Willochra section of the trail. An average of 60 plants per group were planted, with some groups excelling as their eager ( competitive ) group leaders aimed to beat the total of preceding groups.

The students carried out the unfamiliar tasks with enthusiasm and great spirit, and the very low failure( less than 10%) rate is a credit to them and to the preparation assistance of Sam Davies, a volunteer assistant , who supervised the last planting and has assisted the Coordinator on a number of occasions in preparation and followup watering and clearing.

Our efforts are warmly appreciated by the local community and the feedback from them and the Council has confirmed the value of this service which will become more visible over time. Already some plants are over a metre tall and recent clearing of fire threat long grass ( by whippersnapper!) has made the students’ efforts visible, clearly adding to the natural and recreational value of the corridor.

The Head of Middle School, Paul Wright , has to be acknowledged as the person who has championed the value of this service project while the time given to the Coordinator, Tim Harms, has allowed the project to expand, and to include in future years, bridge building by the students as well as trail building.

Wet weather options will be factored in ( not really an issue so far)and Melrose primary school will be the focus of students working with kindergarten and junior primary students in reading assistance and other activities.

The value of this service extends beyond the obvious environmental and economic aspects, and I believe that the real value is in getting ( largely)urban young people working using new skills and their time to assist a rural community which has very low population numbers able to carry out this sort of volunteer work. In the future our students and their families will have tangible evidence of their actions as the trees, shrubs and ground cover mature.

My hope is that we can get assistance from the wider school community as the revegetation extends and the trail improvement commences. This could be in the form of sponsorship, product donation

or physical assistance in watering, clearing and other follow-up work in the hot months following planting.

Tim Harms

Coordinator MYP Community Service.