QLD CoPP Mentoring Day action
The crack team finishing the rock weir
The Boots on Ground Project Day was a culmination of several months of the Communities of Practice Mentoring Program in Queensland. Held on the 7 November 2024, on Mentees’ Jason and Carla Foot’s property ‘Marmadilla’ near Springsure, it gave other Mentees an opportunity to learn about the practicalities and principles of building gully plugs and rock weirs.
The Foots had recently constructed a gully plug and two rock weirs, on a small watercourse near their house, as their mentoring-program project. Mulloon’s Tony Wells (NSW-based Landscape Planner) and Sam Skeat (Regenerative Agriculture Consultant based in Queensland) were onsite leading up to the field day to help Jason build the rock weirs – leaving them strategically unfinished to allow participants to do some work and see the construction process.
Thirteen people, representing five of the mentee properties, participated in the 1-day event during intense heat-wave conditions. The participants were asked to collect and then place small basalt rock to finish the downstream rock ramp of the large rock weir. They were involved in long discussions in the field about landscape geomorphology, construction principles, catchment hydrology and hydraulics, etc. After lunch, they were using a laser level to survey the site for another potential gully plug. All in 40° C! And they remained cheerful, perhaps even inspired.
This project received funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund. Mulloon Institute’s Learning Programs have been developed with the assistance of the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust.
Picking up hot rocks to finish a rock weir
Sam Skeat explaining weir construction and functions
Discussing the construction and rehydration/erosion protection effects of the recently completed gully plug
Surveying the site for a gully plug