Over recent months Sawtell Dune Care has had an influx of new members and several keen volunteers from other sites have also joined us. There are now ten of us.
As our membership increased so did the size of our original site. At the request of Ina Kay from Jetty Dune Care I inspected Boambee Headland which joins our original site at the northern end of Murray’s Beach. It was seriously infested with Lantana and Bitou Bush along with small areas of Johnson Grass, Singapore Daisy, Broad leaf Paspalum and several vine weeds.
Of great interest was the discovery of the rare Glossy Black Cockatoo which feeds almost exclusively on the Casuarina seed cones. Apparently there are quite a few living in the Sawtell/Bongil Bongil area.
This is a high profile site both with locals and tourists and we all felt that something needed to be done to remove the weeds and improve the habitat for the Glossy Blacks. As a result we now rotate our working bees between both sites.
At Murray’s Beach the main focus has been the continued removal of Mother of Millions.
Last year we removed 68 bags of this weed from the site. Individual specimens vary in height from 2mm to 2m. When full the bags get quite heavy, averaging about 16kg. Removing them from the beach can be difficult. One of our younger members, Karen Hutchings came up with the great idea of loading all the bags into a trolly and dragging it up the beach to the cars. It has rather large wheels which makes it easier to traverse the beach.
