Students installing a brushpack weir under guidance and instruction from Landscape Planner Jack Smart, Field Officer Max Brunswick and Birrigai GSO Luke Hyatt.

Mulloon Institute held a one-day workshop at Birrigai outdoor school on the outskirts of the ACT on 21 June. The workshop was attended by 20 high school students from various schools within the ACT and presented by Education Coordinator Tam Connor, Landscape Planner Jack Smart and Field Officer Max Brunswick.

The day consisted of a few activities starting with Acknowledgement of Country from Robert Mann, an Aboriginal Project Officer from ACT Natural Resource Management, and a brief talk from Birrigai General Service Officers (GSO) Joel Bulger and Luke Hyatt about where we are and the cultural significance of the land we stand on. Following this, Jack Smart gave the students some background about Mulloon Institute and a brief of what to expect from the day. The students were then asked to take a walk along a small creek bank for a few hundred metres using all their senses to take note of any changes they saw within the creek bed, banks, vegetation and wildlife. Once the walk was completed a group discussion was held where students pointed out things such as where vegetation was lacking, the bird life wasn’t nearly as abundant, and the banks of the creek seemed bare of grass and more erosion was present.

The next activity involved a stream table module used to simulate erosion where students can use small rocks and twigs to create interventions and see on a small scale how water reacts in loose/unstable sediment.

The students then went on a bush walk further upstream to do some hands-on work with brushpacks. Brushpacks are an affordable, DIY approach to repairing degraded land. They can be built across contours to trap soil, seeds, plant litter and nutrients. They also slow and filter water as it moves down a slope. Brush had been cut by GSO’s Joel and Luke directly from the slopes adjacent to the area we intended to install them. The students were then taught how to tie the packs together using a biodegradable twine and begin to install them within the creeks flow line using stakes to pin the packs down. Two types of brushpacks were used, the first being a fan like shape with the cut ends of the brush facing upstream and the foliage downstream, these help to spread water in higher flows as well as all the other great properties of brushpacks. The second was a simple brush weir, tightly packed and tied brush was laid out and pinned across the creek. This style of brush intervention will spread water out onto either bank/ mini flood plain.