Clean Up Australia Day

5th March

Happy Cleaners: Gary and Betty Chapman, Graeme and Kathy Forrest, Jim Williams, Robyn and Gerry Broadhead, Ron and Alison Brown, Beryl and Daryl Parcell, Graham Moore, Chris and Blake Lenehan, Mal and Trish Hiscox, Paul, Nicole, Stephanie and Brendan Bishop, Gordon Bishop, Lorraine Cummings, Stewart, Narelle, Kyle and Joel Bishop, Joe and Carmel Elmore

After the council suggested half a dozen inappropriate parks we did a bit of searching of our own and came up with three gazetted roads in Muirlea. They were Hillview Dr, Leslie Dr and Pine Mountain Rd.
The weather leading up to the weekend was pretty wet. When we were out on these roads before it had rained there were a few damp spots, after the rain these were water holes.

Because of the weather, and that there were basically three areas to be cleaned, we split into two groups.

Brownie in his Patrol ute, took most of the group and two of the trailers in from the Hillview St end. They filled his ute, both the trailers and Gary’s roof rack quite a few times with things from 400 mouse traps to a number of sheets of corrugated iron. I still don’t know how this group had time for morning tea !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carmel and I took Jim and Daryl, Chris and Blake and Kathy and Graeme in along Leslie Dr. I thought that we would mostly be removing car bodies, so we only had Brownie’s trailer hooked up to Graeme Forrest’s Cruiser. We had only gone a short distance before we came upon the first of many rubbish piles.
I don’t know how many times the trailer was emptied but Graeme missed out on towing any car bodies because of the amount of rubbish that we found along this track.

Jim and Chris aided and abetted by Daryl seemed to be enjoying towing the car bodies and were a little disappointed when we called it a day with a few still there, maybe next year fellas!!!

We returned to Kholo Gardens at lunchtime for a sausage sizzle and to draw the winner of the customary shirt and, this year, a bandana. The winners were Paul Bishop and Graeme Forrest respectively. Tired and with full tummies satisfied with the effort we made we went home.
After speaking to the Council’s co-ordinator, she appeared surprised at the amount of rubbish we had collected, it would have been good to see the look on the faces of the council workers when they came to pick up the skip.

Thanks again to those who helped in making this another successful club organised clean-up. Joe