National Tree Day (NTD), Sunday 27 July, is just around the corner! For our team this is the biggest single event on the calendar, with a whole lot of planning, preparation and promotion going on behind the scenes to make these days a success. Officially we are holding two NTD events this year, at Killcare Beach and at Porters Creek in Wyong. We are also delivering and/or supporting activities for Schools Tree Day (Friday 25 July) as well as a number of other NTD planting events across the Central Coast. 

Whether it’s at one of our official events, one of the others on the Central Coast, or in another area entirely (if you happen to find yourself away on the day), we hope you will be able to get out and get some plants in the ground and help celebrate this important national event. For more information, please stay up to date through Council’s webpage, by keeping an eye on Council’s social media pages, and visiting the Planet Ark website.

Our regular Environmental Volunteer Program, with its weekly and/or monthly sessions, is made up predominantly of people who are retirees (over two thirds of EVP volunteers) and those who are over 60 years of age (80% of EVP volunteers). We expect that this will always be the case. Weekday sessions will only ever have a very limited appeal to people who are working full time and to any of our younger community members who are still at school. Weekend sessions need to compete with other demands like religious, social and sporting events, etc. 

One-off events like National Tree Day offer us opportunities to engage with members of the community who aren’t our regular environmental volunteers. Over the years our NTD events have grown to become a lot more than just planting at the selected sites. Whilst we still hope to see a good turn out from our environmental volunteers, there are education and engagement activities that are designed specifically to attract younger people, and families with children, to come along and participate. Who knows, a little bit of time spent now in helping plant some plants might be sowing the seeds for our next generations of environmental volunteers on the Central Coast? 

National Volunteer Week 2025

I recently had the pleasure of spending the day with a little over 60 volunteers representing 30 different groups from our Environmental Volunteer Program. It isn’t very often that we get to bring people together from their respective groups. Having volunteers coming along representing groups from Patonga in the south, Spencer to the west and San Remo to the north, and lots more groups in between, was great to be a part of.
The occasion for our day was National Volunteer Week. 

This year National Volunteer Week ran from the 19 to the 25 May. We had organised a ferry cruise around Brisbane Water to run during the official week, but the weather had other ideas at the time! The whole week was a wash out with intense rain and localised flooding across the Central Coast. Fortunately we were able to reschedule for 24 June and the weather then was much more appropriate for a day out in the ferry. 

Our day started at Gosford with the ferry heading in a clockwise direction around the Brisbane Water estuary, with stops at Wagstaff and Woy Woy along the way. We had a guest speaker and local historian, Peter Rae, delivering a presentation throughout the day. His presentation covered the early and ongoing development of the Brisbane Water estuary, and surrounding catchment, dating back to the first European settlement in the area. There was a particular focus on forestry and the local ship building industry that was once a dominant industry of the area. We also had informal talks throughout the day from Council’s Environmental Education Officers and Senior Science Communicator about more current environmental management topics relating to the estuary and broader catchment. 

National Volunteer Week gives us an opportunity to thank you all, in a small way, for the ongoing work you carry out for the rest of the year. We have been running events to celebrate NVW with our volunteers for the last few years and will continue to look for ways to offer you interesting and engaging ways to celebrate this week with us in the years ahead. And of course it’s a great way to meet other volunteers who you wouldn’t get to meet through your usual group meetings. 

For those of you who weren’t able to join us for our National Volunteer Week event this year the good news is that we have some other activities and events coming up between now and the end of the year. More chances to come along and meet volunteers from other groups, while also enjoying the interesting and educational things that we organise for the days.

Environmental Volunteer Program Christmas Party 2025

We are now well and truly into our planning for the end of year Environmental Volunteer Program Christmas Party 2025. 

We will be in touch directly with all of our volunteers in the lead up to this event and are planning lots of interesting activities on the day. The format from the last couple of years (or is that the last few years?) has seen us have a workshop or activity for an hour in the morning, some morning tea, then an activity for another hour before finishing up with lunch together. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback on this format so will be running things again this way for 2025. 

Please lock in Sunday 30 November in your calendars to join us. 

If you’ve been along to one of our Christmas Parties in the last couple of years, you’re likely to see some similar workshops, but changed to reflect the different location this year. We also have some new workshops under development. There really should be something to interest everyone, those who come along every year and anyone who has never been to one of these events before. In 2024 we had 98 people attend. It would be amazing to go beyond that this year.

Earth Day

This year, for the first time, we ran some activities to celebrate Earth Day on Tuesday 22 April. This fell within the Easter school holidays, giving us a chance to put on an event directed towards parents with children. We had a planting site at Woongarrah with activities and workshops like face painting, composting, worm farming and building a ‘seed bomb’. The weather was against us at the time, and we only had a relatively small number of people come along on the day. But with some help from our team, and staff from other areas within Council, we managed to send some kids home with very well painted faces whilst also planting a little over 1,000 plants at the site.

We will be looking for other opportunities to celebrate Earth Day again in 2026. 

Other events on the calendar

The June long weekend means Harvest Festival on the Central Coast. This event seems to be growing in popularity each year. Our Environmental Education Officers have been delivering walks and talks, and presenting an interactive and educational stand, as part of Harvest Festival for many years. If you happened to go along yourself for the Platypus Day event on Saturday 7 June you would have been able to learn all about platypus, maybe even spotting one in the Wyong River? You’d have also been able to take home a free plant that was grown by our nursery volunteers. Carlita and Nick have written the ‘Platypus Day:…’ article about this event. 

The Lakes Festival will be running from 7 to 16 November this year, with the Sustainable Future Festival also occurring on Friday 14 and Saturday 15. Our Environmental Education Officers will be busy running workshops and engaging with the community throughout, and of course promoting our Environmental Volunteer Program. For more information about what is on offer at these festivals please visit the webpages for the full event programs.

eNews articles in this edition

The first article in this eNews, ‘Carp to Croc: Fishing for Change on the Central Coast’, was written by Ben Cuerel. Some of you will know Ben from Floating Landcare sessions. Carp is an invasive fish species that, unfortunately, can be found in some Central Coast waterways. This article will tell you all about a new program running on the coast that will help support ongoing research into this pest species, whilst also providing fish to the Australian Reptile Park. 

The second article in this edition, ‘Scratch and sniff…’, is about the use of detection dogs in conservation work. Dogs are proving themselves to be an amazingly effective tool in helping to find flora and fauna, whether desirable natives or unwanted pests. Please read Nick’s article for more information.

Suzie, one of our dedicated Environmental Volunteer Officers, is currently completing her Masters of Conservation Biology, and picking up academic excellence awards along the way. Congratulations Suzie. The third article in this edition, ‘Why Seed Collecting Matters:…’, was written by Suzie and covers some of the challenges and opportunities in collecting native seed.

Our Environmental Education Officer, Carlita, recently designed and delivered some new workshops for schools. The article ‘Celebrating Culture and Sustainability with Schools’ is all about this project.

For our final article of this edition Nick and Carlita have written ‘Platypus Day:…’ about their Harvest Festival activities. For anyone who hasn’t been along to one of these events before it’s something to look forward to for next year. In the meantime, there is some really interesting information about platypus in the article.

As always, happy and safe volunteering.

Michael