Wodonga Urban Landcare Network is inviting farmers and landholders to a practical field day on Thursday, October 29, from 10.30am to 1.30pm. The event will be held at the Duduroa Dhargal Aboriginal Corporation site at Ryans Lagoon, Bonegilla. Uncle Allan Murray will show how restoration work at the Ryans Lagoon Nature Conservation Reserve supports ongoing cultural practices. Topics include weed control, cultural burning, wetland management, revegetation, cultural heritage and local ecosystems.
Noosa Council has welcomed a court ruling over illegal clearing of native vegetation at a Noosa Heads property. Council's Director of Development and Regulation, Richard MacGillivray, said extensive revegetation works are now required to restore the cleared areas. Property developer Kim Carroll and his wife, Heidi Meyer, were in court over planning offences at Picture Point Crescent, where clearing took place without council approval. Court orders require extensive planting of trees, shrubs and ground covers on the property and an adjoining council reserve.
Retired GP Susan Downes, now 76, bought a 200-hectare farm near York, Western Australia, and is restoring its bushland. Her volunteer group has planted about 45,000 native seedlings, and the land will be placed under a conservation covenant. Across the country, older Australians make up most conservation volunteers, according to Landcare Australia's 2026 survey. Ken and Jill Hooper, both in their 80s, have spent decades restoring properties in New South Wales and northern Victoria. Ken says the work is hard but rewarding, and that it keeps him going.
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Lady Elliot Island, at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, was stripped of plants and seabirds after guano miners arrived in the 1860s. It stayed barren for more than a century. Aviator Don Adams and his wife Moya began replanting it in the 1960s and 70s, growing trees in a backyard nursery and hand-planting them. Their work continues under the Gash family, who run an eco-resort powered largely by solar energy. More than 20,000 trees have been planted, and about 100,000 black noddies now nest on the island each year.
