Perth Voice Interactive

THE restoration of Walters Brook in Mt Lawley will be celebrated with a community planting day.

The Swan River tributary—effectively a Water Corporation drain—had been heavily eroded by fast-running water and contained little of its original vegetation.

In 2013 Vincent city council started a $173,360 facelift by re-contouring banks, installing gabion baskets (wire frames filled with rocks) and planting 3500 native plants and trees.

Caroline Cohen—co-chair of the Banks precinct action group which lobbied for the brook’s restoration—says native flora will attract migratory birds to Banks Reserve.

“In 2007 a truck crashed at the nearby Mt Lawley subway and engine oil spilled into the brook and straight into the Swan River,” she says.

“A few birds died, so hopefully the restoration will shore it up and help to avoid a similar incident.”

Since forming in the mid-‘90s, the group’s lobbying has secured a children’s playground and restoration of the foreshore at the reserve.

The community planting day will also include a welcome to country ceremony and a free BBQ.

Vincent city council spokesperson Sheande Unicomb says anyone is welcome to come along and help shove 800 plants into the ground.

Back in May 2012 the council and Noongar elders officially recognised Banks Reserve—a riverside park that rests on land known to Whadjuk-Noongar people as Warndoolier—as a ‘Place of Reconciliation’.

The planting ceremony will be held from 8.30am-2pm on Saturday, May 31.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK