Help needed for Father’s Day native planting effort

A CALL-out has been made for volunteers to help plant one thousand various indigenous box ironbark forest species at Hustlers Reef Reserve in North Bendigo on Fathers Day, Sunday 1 September.

The site was formerly home to one of Bendigo’s richest gold mines from 1865 to 1921 and is now a public space.

It features a memorial for seven miners who died 321 metres below ground in an explosion in 1914 – Bendigo’s biggest mass fatality.

The planting event is the latest effort of an enduring 25-year project led by Aldo Penbrook from the Friends of Hustler’s Reef Reserve community group.

Mr Penbrook said while the City of Greater Bendigo supports the project by supplying plants, spraying and mowing, all of the labour is entirely voluntary.

“The project has worked from the top of the Neimann Street frontage downhill towards Hustlers Road and it’s taken 25 years to get to this section,” he said.

“We’re trying to restore the reserve (to) as best as what it was like before the gold rush, which would have been fully covered in dense forest.

“On the day we’ll be putting in mainly ground covers and grasses, so it’ll be a dense spacing, more like a native flower garden in a sense.”

He said the event represents a “fantastic opportunity” to contribute to the beautification and better biodiversity values for the inner-urban reserve.

“It benefits everybody for their health and well-being to be able to get some nature immersion/forest bathing – that’s a Japanese concept – and have a break from the hectic lifestyles we all lead,” Mr Penbrook said.

If you’d like to help, register your interest on the Planet Ark website at treeday.planetark.org/site/10030401.