Date:        27th October  2018
Meeting point:  On Grey Access Road, northern entrance to Wedge Grey Track
Environment Day: Working  on dune rehabilitation and bollard installation.
Site: Known as Landcruiser Hill,  Wedge-Grey Track,  Turquoise Coast.

Two teams worked this site of three bare runs up the hill….while others moved up the track installing bollards and doing track maintenance.

The job here is to lay webbing over bare sand to aid in regeneration of plant growth by stopping sand movement by wind, catching seeds and retaining them insitu till the coming rains.

Step: 1/ Remove brush originally woven through the wire and bollards to make the wires be very obvious to both  kangaroos and drivers wishing to drive up the dune.
2/ Pace out required lengths of jute though of a manageable weight.
3/ Measure and cut lengths of jute webbing to suit, roll up again, one person ‘carry’ (stagger) up the hill, place in position and unroll jute.
4/ Peg down with biodegradable pegs placed every 600mm

Then I suspect it was Bill Clarke (member of both Track Care and a Wedge Shackie) recognised this was crazy time, motion and people management …!!!!

Major Rethink..
1/ Place full jute roll at bottom of the run
2/ Two people commence unrolling the jute roll and two people pull the end up the hill to the desired end point.
3/ Cut and peg.    How easy (relatively) was that.

Work moved a lot faster this way though the more we walked on the sand the softer it became, the harder to balance while reaching to hammer in pegs or simply going up the slope carrying a weight.
Next ..the pegging down. To be pegged down along the edge and in the middle of the roll  WITHOUT WALKING ON THE  WEBBING. otherwise it separated leaving large holes.
Hmmm… arms not being that long.. we were just lucky that the jute was eventually covered by more brush so our ‘disruption’ of the web of the jute was not ‘critical’ (LOL). And we finished it.!

Above:  DBCA Ranger Dave briefing us before commencement and separation into groups.
Below: Laying  it the hard way. Small pieces measured and cut and carried to the top.
Next level lengths the same method.

And then we wised up and simply dragged the jute sliding up the sand and pegged into place. Retrieved the brushing from where we’d thrown it and spread as far as it would go across the jute.

       

Subsequent maintenance and more brushing will be done when required.

The web laying team cars parked up and  some camped here overnight.
This was an area where at this period no camping was allowed…but as we were doing volunteer work with DBCA we were invited to camp overnight to be able to complete the work in the morning.    After lunchtime when we sheltered from the sun under our awning, we watched adult ticks walking across the sand converging wherever a human transmitted their presence.!!!
We made the decision not to camp where we parked; to complete our section of the work on the one day;  and to head home to Perth to sleep.

We have since been reassured by the Rangers that in years past when this was a very popular stretch of the coast and was always  crowded with holidaying campers or day trippers, the ticks that accompany kangaroos were rare.    With the subsequent prohibition  on camping the kangaroos returned and so did the ticks!.  Very soon the planned  reversal to  allow camping  will see the ticks again disappear with the roos. But not this night.

The other bollarding teams have driven further up the track to other sites.