SPEAKER_03 0:00

I'd like to acknowledge the Wandru Warong people as the traditional owners of the land where this recording was made. Over the past few months, I've been walking through reserves around Melbourne, NAM, and recording conversations along the way. I've met with traditional owners and First Nations peoples, conservationists, ecologists, and others who've chosen a place that matters to them. We walk and talk about nature, what lives there, what's changed, and what needs protecting. You'll hear our footsteps, the wind in the trees, the birds overhead, and the city not too far away. This is Finding Melbourne's Nature. Today we're walking through Daribin Parklands with Peter Wiltshire. This is a special ecological reserve close to the city with a complex past. The landscape has shifted from natural bushland to quarry to tip and now into a valued community reserve. Peter's been a ranger here for over 40 years and has played a key role in its rehabilitation and restoration. As we walk, we'll hear Peter's journey through the years, the history of the reserve, and how this landscape has changed during his time. Thank you so much for doing this.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

No, you're welcome, my friend.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Do you mind doing a short introduction?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, no, I'll do. My name is Peter Wiltshire. I'm a 65-year-old ranger. Been based at Dariban Parklands for 40 years, and my main skill is wastewater management.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

That's a good skill to have.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yeah, it's a it's one that's needed when you're doing a land reclamation exercise on an old landfill. But uh yeah, if you'd asked me if I'd be here 40 years, 40 years ago, I would have said no, get a life. But this place hooked me in, and it's you know, how how many opportunities do you get to work with such brilliant people? When I say brilliant people, I'm talking about the the ratepayers. Yeah, right. This park's founded by people. So give you a rundown on it. This will give you context of why I'm hooked here. So, you know, prior to 60,000 years of war wonder, yes, 60,000 years of war wundry, everything was fine. Okay? Everything was fine for 60,000 years. And then Hoddle walked through here in 1838, and then the land was bought by speculators in Sydney and eventually subdivided into plots. And the particular characters that bought this parcel of land on this side of Darabin Creek, which is the western side, or the city of Darabinside, was a family called the Adams Family, you know. And the Adams family uh they ran the general store, the the old John Adams, John Sharp Adams his name was, and he was like the you know, the postmaster general. He was just your all-round community-based guy, sat for counsel and stuff. But one of his sons, one of his sons sort of noticed that the rock here was perhaps worth investigating. We could dig that up, dad, and we could, you know, form a quarry, and they did. And of course, this is one side of the park is um Silurian sandstone, so that's about 430 million-year-old sandstone. The other side's quaternary basalt, which is where the atoms were, which is 860,000-year-old basalt rock, volcanic rock. So they decided to quarry this bluestone rock out, and and that in 90 years they they took out six billion tonnes of this rock. So they dug this you know massive hole in this this where we are now in Darrell Parklands. And um, and and of course, you know, when you when you got a big hole in the ground, nothing turns the council more on than a hole in the ground. They saw it in the 60s and said, you know what, we could use this as a landfill, as a tip. And so the city of Northcut then uh leased this in 1968, and what took 70 years to dig out, uh they they they sort of filled it in four four years. And the result was you know, the EPA wasn't formed until 1972, and so from 68 through to 1972, this is when the main energy was going into that landfill site, most rubbish. So who's on the gate? Who's overseeing what goes in the tip site? Yeah, you've got some council guy that's probably got a, you know, plantus fasciitis or he's got a crooked back or something like that. Yeah. And you know, you turn up with a bottle of Johnny Walker, and you know, where can I stick this medical waste? Oh, it might just stay in the back corner. You'll be as right, you know. Well, I've got this plutonium, where do you put it? Yeah, just over there be right. So the oversight of what went in the landfill was really poor. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't monitored, and it wasn't a non-organic tip, it was everything. It was licensed for domestic rubbish, which meant anything back in the 60s. Wow. And and so, you know, what happened is they filled up the tip in 1974. The public that had lived around this area, they've lived next to a quarry with permanent blasting, then they lived next to a stinky tip. So these resins had had enough.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

And at the start I said, you know, how lucky it might have worked with these rate payers, or resins, as I call. What happened was that they just had enough as a they just said this, they could see that the landscape here was beautiful, they could see the vision. Amongst the blackberry and all the other things that artichoke, thistles, and everything else that stopped this place looking like it should have. They could see it. And uh and they eventually got so frustrated with the the the way this land had been used that they sort of basically said, listen, we've got to turn this into a park. And they rallied one particular lady uh named Sue Korsh. She rang the Premier's department uh every day for two years until she got the then Premier Sir Rupert Hamer, who was a very environmentally, you know, sensitive guy. He started the Green Wedge. He was switched on with nature. Trust for Nature? He started Trust for Nature. Yeah, he's a real significant guy, you know, and he was a patron of this this thing. And they convinced him to meet with the council and and buy the land off Borough. That was the landfill to build the parklands. So they could uh so they they they got three million dollars together and bought this this land and and um and formed at Dariban Parklands. Um and then, you know, uh in 1979, 19, there was people, you know, donating their time, volunteers building footbridges and toilets and picnic shelters. They were doing everything, you know. This is purely public-led action. This park was a park of people. And um, and basically what happened is that a black ooze started coming out of the slopes. Oh no. And they um they thought, oh, what's this? You know, and the residents grabbed a sample of it called the EPA in the 1980s, I'd say, 978-98, somewhere around there, and they they discovered, you know, well, yeah, you've got a leech ape problem. So the the the the EPA sent put an abatement notice on City of uh Northcote, the then City of Northcote, and said, You've got to stop this stuff getting in the Darabin Creek. And uh and so the cutest part of this story is what the council did at the day. Uh the uh the first thing they did was hired a plumber. Let's love that. There's a landfill. Got a plumber, yeah, a deer guy. He was a deer guy, met him, but uh but reality they ended up hiring a uh company called Woodward and Clyde to do an evaluation of the site who said you've got a leach-shaped problem from the landfill, you've got you know water coming into your hole, mixing with the rubbish, and that's what's leaking out of the slope. So, you know, the so the then city engineer was a guy called Kevin Hints, was a really smart guy, really smart, uh, and a really decent human being too. He um basically, you know, recognised that you have to get serious about this and you have to do something to protect the Darabin Creek. This is before people thought like that, it's hard to explain. Because I remember when I started at five o'clock the Darabin Creek would change colour because the EPA staff had knocked off of the weekend, and all the all the industries upstream had just opened up the floodgates. Terrific Creek used to change colour and flying damn it! Why didn't the EPA pay overtime in the end? Uh yeah, so what happened is that uh Kevin Hints basically, you know, the the the they the council invested in in in finding out what was going on. But I I there was a there was a couple of guys here, Cam Beetzel. Yeah, yeah, I know Cam. Cam was the first Ranger here. Really? Yeah, yeah, right. But Cam was one of the first people, then a guy called Chris Barry.

unknown 10:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Then there was Craig Whiteford, who's now the zoo's Victoria. Zoo's Victoria, Craig Whiteford, significant person in my life. Uh then Richard Felton, who's up at working for Deeker. Uh, and then, and at those times I worked with Craig and Richard, and then when Richard uh quit after you know being here 18 months or so, uh they employed me to take over and run things. And so this Kevin Hintz engineer sort of said to me, Listen, we've got this lead shape problem. Do you want to have a look into what we could do about that? And uh and he I remember him saying, uh we'll give you $24,000 to intend to do something about it. And I remember that seemed like a lot of money back then. Uh this is 1985. Yeah, yes, the 80s, yeah, it's that sort of time. And I just remember that uh I I I talked uh I have I was very fortunate that a lot of these residents that founded this park were very tied to Melbourne University. Oh yes. So I had great access to some really smart mines, and uh one of the particular characters was um uh told me about reedbed technology that's being used down barw and water and and other places. So I I checked out sewerage systems, I checked out all industrial wastewater things, and I sat there and I looked at, I evaluated all the ways of treating wastewater with the understanding that I was looking at a leech problem, not a sewage problem. And uh and then I came up with this rough design of a system back in '91, I think it was, and uh, and it just sat, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good on you, Pete. Thanks for that. You know, put it up on the shelf and no one worried about it. But then Jeff Kennett happened, and he was a premier that came in and he changed everything. He changed the council boundaries. He changed City of Darabin, uh City of Northcote and City of Heidelberg, who are the two councils that owned the land, he turned them into City of Daribin and City of Banuul. But the big thing that happened is he appointed three commissioners to each of these new super councils to evaluate risks in these new councils. And of course, when the council uh when the commissioners were looking at risk in City of Darabin, the newly formed council, what's the priorities? Well, City of Darabin, first thing was the the infrastructure, drainage infrastructure around North was so old and dilapidated. Uh number two was us, I can't quite remember, number three was us. Yeah, right. The leech problem. And the commissioners recognised this is a significant risk to the council having this oozy stuff leaking at Garib Creek and being continually prosecuted and fined by the EPA. And so they they turned round and they recommended that this be the council, the newly formed council, do something about it. And so hence they started sniffing around at the parklands, and I was here, of course, and they were saying, Oh, we've got to do do something. I sat there and got my drawing out and go, I've been working on this, what do you think? And they they had a look at it and said, Have you engineered it? I said, I'm not an engineer, I don't know what engineering needs to be done. And anyway, so they have they got a company called GHD to come down and evaluate my sort of design and then appointed a council engineer to work with me, and we built this system because the commissioner said you've got to do something about this wastewater. So we built the Leech 8 treatment system, which is a network of wetlands, a biofilter, etc. etc. etc. And doing that was a big project, you know, it was a big project. But the funny thing is, we did that project, the whole thing for $278,000, I think. Back now, it costs multi tens of millions of dollars now. We did and we were the first place in Australia to build wetlands on a landfill site. So that was significant. And the EPA were with us all the way, and so they oversaw everything we did. Um and and for the public, they thought all this work was building an amenity. They they thought, oh look, they're building these lovely wetlands, they're doing all this land forming and stuff, without the knowing that the real secret was we're going to grab, you know, what was then 400,000 litres a week of leachate and prevent it getting into Darabin Creek. And then uh you just keep tweaking it, and that's what I've been doing, that's why I've been here 40 years. I've been ever tweaking it, and I've been I've got it to the point now where the wastewater, in the treated water, supports mayflies, supports really sensitive macroinvertebrates. I've got Ricalis living in my water treatment system, I've got the highest density of turtles Melbourne University researchers have ever seen in Melbourne. Really? And they're healthy. The turtles that are in the water treatment system are healthier than the ones in this wetland system. We don't know why. We think it might have to do with the fact that, you know, there's so much uh stuff in the leechate system that it probably kills all the microbes and stuff that can bacteria that can make get into turtles, parasites, and things like that. We're not quite sure they're still researching it. But there is there is a really good possibility in the next year we can introduce fish back into that treatment system, which is the pistol resistance for me. To get that to happen is absolutely will be magical. And hence, why have I been here 40 years? That is why there's this hook. Can I get this water to this point? Can I get this water to this point? Besides the fact it's a beautiful place to work and it's a lovely park, but the water treatment system is now at the point where we're just polishing it and tweaking it, so the future is positive. The leech aid system or the water treatment side of it, and as I say, what this is, is a bushland park, but it's a water treatment system disguised as a bushland park, is one of the best examples in Australia of land reclamation where we've taken a piece of land and transformed it into, you know, a sort of we're seven kilometres from the GPO, Melbourne GPO, and here you've got this haven with, you know, uh rare and endangered plants, you know, we've got things that have come back, you know, like Dionella Mina started popping its head up in places where there was nothing but chilli and needle grass and briar rose, and you know, and blue periwinkle and olive trees, and you you didn't think there was anything there. That was a real, you know, eye opener when that happened. So, and then when those little things happened, once we we had echidnas in here turning up, and we thought, where are the kidnappers? And they actually went in everyone's gardens where the ants were, but having echidnas here, we the animals started reacting to the place, the ecology started changing, and that that was really, really interesting, but it was not my focus. My focus was the water treatment and protecting the city of Darabin from EPA and protecting the Darabin Creek and by extension the Yarrow, which is only 1.8 kilometres away, you know, from this park, to protecting it. And I and I took that very seriously, and I made a personal commitment to myself as a environmentalist to protect the Darabin Creek. And so, why is an old fossil like me still here, you know, 65-year-old, you know, bit broken, sore bones. Why am I still here? It's because there's people that are committed everything to this place, uh, residents, uh, the the two founders, Sue Kors and Anthea Fleming, you know, in their 90s, still committed uh to the place. Our volunteer engagement, you know, we've I don't think anyone's got as much volunteers as we've got. You know, we've got our Thursday crew, which is you know, up to 30 people every Thursday. Weeding. That's fantastic, yeah. Weeding. And if we get asking the plant, they weed. And then as we speak the Tuesday crew, this is a Tuesday. We've got uh we've got the people in our nursery uh growing us plants. We we we've saved $25,000 this year just in the fact that we've got volunteers collecting the seed, taking the cuttings, growing the plants for us. We've invested $2,800 in materials and they've given us $25,000 worth of plants. The last park care day we had, which was like our working bee day, every plant that was planted was grown by volunteers. So the whole cycle. So, you know, we we're we're doing really good work and the the park's loved because it's discovered. And the secret of the Darabin Parklands, for all you people listening, the secret to this this parklands is everyone feels like they've found it. It's a depression in amongst two suburbs. So you drive your car down, you need to take a whiz because you know you're you're you need to use the lube, and you find, oh, there's a public toilet, and you go there and you park your car, and you sort of look out after you've gone and done your business, you look out and go, Oh, I'll just walk down there and have a look. And all of a sudden it opens up, and people, you know, they go back and tell their you know friends and their wives and their husbands and brothers and sisters, I found this great park. It's really nice, you know. It's a really nice dog walk off lead area, too, you know. It's really nice. Where is it? Oh, it's just in in Elfington, Ivanhoe. Whereabouts? I don't know what that part. And there was people during COVID, there were people that lived 200 metres away from the park had never been here. Yeah. Yeah, and during COVID it just became like the most popular place in the world, and it was packed, it was packed. And everyone seemed to buy a dog. And uh, so it's very so people feel that they've found it, and they tell their friends, I found this great park, I found this great park, I found it. So they instantly take ownership to it, and that's the secret to it.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

That's what makes people care about it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Yeah, and that's and for being the the the old ranger here, that's one of the things I've learned is people that come here regularly, whether they're dog walkers or joggers, they know the park and they know the character. You get to see people. There's someone being pretty dodgy, you know. They'll they'll they'll they'll be the word is, you know, there's this dodgy character, they'll come to the office and say, This is some dodgy character, and say, we'll come down and have a look and find out, you know, it's probably some good it's usually a botanist. You know what I mean? Someone examining someone watches, yeah. It's harmless, but you know. But you know, but the reality is that, you know, there's this passive surveillance on the place. And a love for it. And there's nooks and crannies. You can come down here and find your own little private piece of land and just go, okay, you know, this is really nice. And it can feel like yours, and that's the great selling point. And that's the hook that got me too, you know. But more so the trying to get this water to the point where I can put fish in it. And um, but on the other thing, Ben, the other thing I should mention is the the big ecological things. I'm oh I'm glossing over something that was really significant, and that's let me talk about the day an eastern Rosella tried to get into a concrete power pole lifting slot. Wow. Okay, I I I witnessed this Eastern Rosella hanging onto a concrete power pole, the lifting slot. And I'd been working as a ranger for a while, but I was so focused on the water, I just had dropped the ball on the ecology of the park. But this bird had a significant impact on me. I saw it and go, what are you doing that for? And then it dawned on me, okay, there are no tree hollows here. That you need tree hollows, don't you? There's no tree hollows. The park's too young. Tree hollows take 50 to 90 years to form. And what was I thinking? I need to I need to do something about it, but I don't like nest boxes, and I hate nest boxes in urban areas because they only have they have pest birds, you know, Indian miners, starlings. And I'd witnessed that in the past. So I I talked to a couple of people at La Trobe University, George Parris being one of them. Dear George. Good luck. Lovely, lovely. And you know, George is one of those people that's you know technically amazing, knowledge-wise. You know, George, George George is technically such a better ranger than I'd ever be. But at the same time, horses for courses, I don't think that George would sit there like playing with you know car bodies and rubbish and shit that's in landfill. But yeah, no, George, George was doing nest boxing, there was a couple of characters doing some stuff, and I I sort of looked at it, but what happened was I was trying to figure out why I hadn't seen Eastern Rosellas before, and that bird stuck in my mind, and then one day I saw an Eastern Rosella trying to get into uh uh uh a smallish hole in an old willow tree again, and it struck me. So I decided I'd build a nest box. This is after telling everybody I hated nest boxes, mind you, and the particular volunteer, his name was Michael Mann, who was a member of the Friends Group, had been saying you should put nest boxes up, you should put nest boxes up, and I'd say, nah, nah, you just increase uh uh Indie Minor pop Indian minor population, give them a place to harbour. Anyway, I I decided to bang this nest box up really quickly because this uh Eastern Rosella looked desperate, and I thought I'd put it back on the spot. And I put this nest box up, and Michael caught me doing it. This this very volunteer was with his girlfriend or wife and caught me. And aha, you do like nest boxes. And after talking about it, he made the point that you know if you're gonna put nest boxes up, you've got to monitor them. And that started a relationship where we we we put up, you know, like 30 boxes, every one of them was full of Indian miners. So we we started going, okay, we've got to get rid of the Indian miners. So we started, we we started researching Indian miner work, and you know, the Canberra Indian miner action group had done masses of work on it. So we started reading up on them and using and and we thought we'd we'll do it ourselves. So we started trapping Indian miners, we got rid of 2,000 birds out of here, 2,000 Indian miners over about six years and it transformed the place. Really? It transformed it. So, and then we put up 150 nest boxes and we monitor the nest boxes every three weeks without fail. And we've almost there's 31 miners left in the park.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

You know it that well.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Yeah, because uh they're the ones we couldn't trap, they they were too smart for the P-Gee traps. We you know, if you had more time, I could show you some amazing footage. We we we started doing presentations on Indian miners right around the state. We developed, I and I, you know, I was on Gardening Australia about nest boxing. We developed a real expertise in nest boxing. We've worked out, you know, there's books on nest boxes, but they're wrong. We've worked out thermal properties, coloration, we've worked out everything of how to get native animals into nest boxes. There's animals that there's animals that we don't understand. Uh red rump parrots or grass parrots. We don't, we've done everything to try and track them into our nest boxes. Never have we found them. Uh and we've also we've also struggled to you know hook in um things, common things like galars and stuff, you know. We we just haven't had success. But eastern Rosellas, yeah, massively successful. We've got king parrots here, we've got more biodiversity here than we've ever had. Um we've you know we've pushed the nest box camera technology, we've you know helped build that up throughout Australia. Um we've we've we've done, we had an industrial designer contact us and say, listen, I can I can build a nest box that can recognise the colour of birds. I've had a lot of people work alongside me here that are just brilliant people, you know, really talented, and that's why Daraban Parklands is what it is now. It is currently still a water treatment system, disguised as a bushland park, but that's the hook for me. The interesting thing, my nickname's Puff. Yep, and there's a mound called Mount Pufflow here, it's just a just a rise here. Well, when we built the wetlands here, the EPA, you know, we we were digging rubbish up, and so we we had this pile of rubbish when we were building wetlands, and we had this full philosophy, it's our old rubbish, it's not we're not taking it anywhere. So what we did is we bunkered it, you know, we bunkered the rubbish, and then the EPA said, Oh, you better cover that. And we go, how much? Oh, by 10 metres, so it never gets dug up again, I don't know right. And I remembered, you know, springing up Transport going, hey, you know, the domain tunnel you're dealing under the arrow. Yeah, can I have some of that fill? And I got, you know. Really? Yeah. Came here, wow. And I brought, you know, I brought um, I think it was 900 truckloads. And we created the mound up there, the highest point in Elfington. And then it became one of the points of the spiritual healing trail, you know. But the reason it's called Mount Puffalo is because one of my idiotic friends turned up one day and he used to call the parklands Puffalo County, because I I spent so much time. He goes, Puff County, that's what he called it. And then he turned around and used playing on the word Mount Buffalo. Yes, he played on that and he goes, So hey Puff, so where's this Mount Puffalo you've been building that you've been telling us about? And I showed it to him, and a couple of people heard him say it, yeah, and it just stuck. It stuck. It stuck, it became a colloquialism in Mount Puffalo. So it's called Mount Puffalo. It's not a mound, it's just it's just the highest, it's the highest thing in Elfington. Really? Yeah. Are we free to walk? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

Let's have a walk. I'll grab my bag. The moment we went for a walk, you could tell Peter's very popular in the park, and everybody wanted to stop and have a chat to him. Good bud. G'day, how you going?

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Now I know. You look like Steve Kilby.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Steve Kilby.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Oh! The band! That's a good compliment. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

It's exciting to see wildlife thriving in this reserve, and Peter tells us about some of his nest boxes.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

One of the things that's really interesting is that this not that box, but this little box here full of microbats.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Oh really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

So it's working well that it's the 125S was standing for uh it was originally sugar gliders. The sugar gliders go everywhere. We've got sugar gliders in all sorts of boxes. We've got a lot of sugar gliders. Really?

SPEAKER_03 31:02

That's great to have so close to Melbourne. Yeah, cleft gliders, yeah, we've got lots of them. Yeah, great. Has there been much First Nations heritage found here?

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Yeah, well, we had the treaty here. Yeah, right. You know, we've you know uh the the treaty day was fantastic here. No, we've got a strong connection with the Wandry. Uh got Australia's only spiritual healing trail. Wow. Which is uh well used. Five to ten thousand people a year come and use that. So that's a uh a sort of like a meditation, a matter of what a sort of first people's uh way of dealing with stress. I like it. It was a gift of reconciliation. I'll just I'll just walk you down to the fish ladder because you might have seen the fish ladder.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

I haven't seen the fish ladder. So were you part of the fish ladder creation?

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Yeah, I've been moaning about it for years. So we just crossed the creek here and uh then I'll be able to show demonstrate to you. Melbourne Water built it and paid for it, yes, and designed it. So they I you know kudos to them. So let's cross over here.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

So how does it work?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Alright, it's twenty-five meters long, yes, and there's rocks situated uh about two 2.4 meters apart. Yep. Uh and what it does is it's it's been hydrologically designed so the water goes past the rocks and turns around back on itself. Can you see how the water turns around back on itself? I can, yeah. Well, that is how the fish ladder works. The fish come up, you know. We're talking wee little things, you know, like galaxies and flathead gudge and stuff. They come up, they get the first part, they get in the eddy that turns it back, have a rest. Then they can swim up the next bit.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Ah, it's just a step by step by step by step process. Little whirlpools. Yeah, see the whirlpools there, the water goes back in itself. Yep. Little eddies.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Yeah. That's amazing. How did um how did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Like it came about because Melbourne water, they did some, they did a survey of the creek. Yep. They found ten species of fish down here. Really? Down lower stream, and then they found only one upstream from what I'm about to show you.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Yeah, right. I'm just trying to show you what it looked like beforehand.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

It's good we need a fish ladder this close to Melbourne. That's what it was. A tiny channel. Like it was a tiny channel.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

It's like a gather. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure I've got vision of it working in floods. And now it's this big, big open green area, yeah, a couple of metres across.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Maybe 10. That's how it used to be. Oh, so the channel's so tiny. Yeah, see? How is the fish?

SPEAKER_01 34:39

The fish's gonna swim up that. I get ya. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are those little fish gonna get up past that? Ah so that's so you know, they had no hope.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

So now they've staged the rocks. Yeah, it's tiny, it is tiny.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

And so we completely renovated it and created a fish ladder. So now they can come up, have a rest, have a rest, have a rest, have a rest.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Exactly like us climbing a ladder. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

So right now there could even be things happening in there. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

And then and so, yeah, I haven't they haven't shared the results of the the after survey, but I imagine that you can imagine, you can imagine all the fish can get up in there.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Yeah. Oh, it looks like it's doing something.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yeah, it's well it obviously would work. Yeah, yeah, so it's it that's what it is. The fish wave.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

I like it. I can't thank you enough for being so generous with your time. No, my pleasure, Ben. I appreciate it. And just just hearing this is inspiring for me. Like it's massive, and uh it means a lot, and it's just such a great story to hear, like it's so awesome to think that you know, because people are gonna need to be thinking about doing this sort of stuff in other places, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Yeah, well, Ceres is a land reclamation exercise too. Yeah. So I've got an affinity with Ceres, but it's a different sort of kettle of fish. But I I don't know if they've got the leech ape problem I have, but uh yeah, if it wasn't for the leech ape, would I have been here 40 years? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

It's a funny relationship.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Yeah, but I I developed a a strong relationship with the the community here, yeah. And you know, you just have to come down on a Thursday morning and see people weeding, you know, it's just you just sit down and go, my god. And and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Just you know, we've turned the tip into a lovely park. We've we put we don't pollute the Darbin Creek, we protect the Darbon Creek, we've created habitat for a variety of animals, and the the punters, you know, come here none the wiser that they're walking around on a water treatment system.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

That was Peter Wiltshire, and you've been listening to Finding Melbourne's Nature. If you want to hear more episodes, please check out finding Melbourne's nature.com or check us out on any of the streaming services or social media. Thanks for joining us.