Clean Up Australia Day is on Sunday 4th of March - 8am to 10am.
Looking for experienced and new Volunteers....
Yes, we will be looking forward to Clean Up North Arm Cove for 2018, and hope to increase the volunteer count from the healthy number of 27 keen (but wet) souls last year, to well....even more.
For those that haven't done this before, the general process is that volunteers present in the ways listed below, are given gloves/bags/etc (referred to as 'kit') sign on and combined into a group to clean up a designated area. Those on the roads wear 'hi vis' and are adults. Young ones are most welcome and will be assigned relatively benign areas such as bushland tracks but must be accompanied by an adult family member - often families happily go about cleaning up. Sensible enclosed footwear is insisted upon. Collected rubbish, in bags mostly, is left at the community centre for the council to pick up.
It really is a great way to meet and socialise with fellow NAC-ers, and to feel great having helped in your area for 2018.
To encourage attendance the following is proposed:
- Attendance on the Sunday starting at the Community Hall at 8am and finishing at10am is preferred but operations will be open on Saturday the 3rd of March for those volunteers who can't attend on the Sunday morning. No reason to have atheists only on Clean Up Australia day. Any volunteer time on that weekend will be greatly appreciated, just make sure you get in touch, preferably via email, and I will make sure you have from me the required kit, a designated area to clean up, the necessary paperwork filled in - and I will give general support.
- On the day, experienced volunteers may pre book their volunteering with me and go straight to their designated area - just make sure the paperwork is done and you have the necessary kit issued to you.
- Volunteers may suggest areas they wish to clean up and be designated to those areas.
Furthermore....
- I am told it is not going to rain this time....
- If you see any rubbish on your meanderings around NAC, even if you are not volunteering, please, please, please mark where rubbish is on a map - and get that to me a week before.
- Volunteers are encouraged to encourage friends and family who happen to be in NAC to volunteer as well. Why not? Find out if they are true friends....
- Volunteers with 4wds / trailers or utes to pick up bags etc will be esteemed and generally lauded volunteers, but really no more so than general volunteers.
- You may need your wheels to get to designated areas.
- Some volunteers are needed to organise tea and coffee to refresh those volunteers stumbling, dragging their knuckles into the community hall after 10am.
- A volunteer with a bubbly personality, a car and a good camera is required to roam around the various areas taking happy snaps of happy (grrr..) volunteers, encouraging same to bigger and better things, while avoiding small flying objects and reporting back to me, comfortably holding post at the community centre, to let me know how groups are fairing and if they require more kit or back up.
My thanks go out to those who routinely pick up litter on our roadsides during the year. Rubbish dumping is an issue here, and more dumping is only encouraged if there is rubbish already there. It makes it so much harder for fines to be imposed if one load of rubbish is dumped on another. I can't imagine what our patch would look like if we didn't do this essential activity once a year.
Robert van Zandvliet, 121 Cove Blvd, 0419 536566, artech2@bigpond.com.
