Elizabeth Point working bee, Saturday May 30 2026

10 volunteers met on a beautiful sunny day to see how our blackberry removal work had fared over the last few months. When we started a year ago, this site was contaminated by a large thicket of blackberry. Over the year, several working bees had greatly removed much of this weed.

Jason Andrew-Smith, of Patrulya Nayri, had shown us how to safely introduce fire into this environment a year ago, which was near a midden, and a rock quarry, and because of its beauty, sunny north facing aspect, proximity to food sources in Deep Bay, would have been a busy and popular site with Melukerdee people.

The blackberries were shooting young shoots and were easy to identify and remove in the damp soil. Our planting in their place over the last year were thriving , so we continued with the work of removing them.

A couple of months previously, a car had been burned out at the end of the laneway leading to the old jetty site, which was the rock quarry at the water’s edge. Council had finally organised the removal of the car body, but there was a lot of debris remaining; plastic, bits of battery and various small pieces. Catherine and Colleen set about cleaning this site up, while the rest of attended to the new blackberry shoots still attached to root balls in the damp ground. These were easy to remove in comparison to thickly interwoven mature plants that had been there a year ago. Our previous plantings were looking healthy in their biodegradable tree guards, and more plants were planted.

One amusing moment occurred when Kathleen, deep in thick blackberries, suddenly yelled out when she thought she had been hit with a blackberry stem. She had inadvertently disturbed a sleeping ringtail which had built its nest low to the ground deep in the blackberries. Usually they have their nests some metres off the ground in tea tree or similar small trees. The possum ran up her leg, up her back and jumped into a nearby tree and took stock after this rude awakening, then gradually movedoff to another of its nests. Both Kathleen and ringtail were unharmed.

An indignant and sleepy ringtail possum

And followed up, as usual, with far too many cakes and hot tea and coffee at the water’s edge looking over Deep Bay.