We are now three years in with one year to go on our four-year project to transform the Dandenong Creek corridor into a world-class urban Living Link. Together with our six partner councils (Maroondah, Knox, Whitehorse, Monash, Greater Dandenong and Casey), Parks Victoria and Melbourne Water we’ve been working at 38 priority sites to habitat for wildlife in this important corridor, as well as making it a more beautiful place for people to enjoy.

In the 2018-19 financial year, these works included 72.5 hectares of weed control (16.6 ha new and 55.9 ongoing), 16.9 hectares of revegetation to fill ‘gaps’ in the corridor, installation of 18 nest boxes for Powerful Owls and 150 metres of fencing to protect revegetation areas.

The project also has a strong community focus, with 34 public events that engaged 2081 people in 2018/19. These included two large National Tree Day plantings, four bird discovery walks (in partnership with Birdlife Australia), an Indigenous bush tucker walk, a Frog survey results and celebration night (including presentation of the Frog Census results from 2017/18), the second Discover Dandenong Creek Festival, a bat and nocturnal night, a Wetland Wonders event, and many more.

The two Deakin University Masters students completed some social research to better understand the barriers and benefits of connecting with nature in the Dandenong Creek catchment.

Lyndale Greens Primary School (sponsored through this project) completed their Kids Teaching Kids program, which culminated in a conference held in Melbourne in October. The students presented their workshop “Foaming Mad” to other school children, highlighting the disturbing Dandenong Creek ‘foaming’ events.

Living Links would like to thank all of our wonderful delivery partners for their fantastic work so far, the community for their enthusiastic involvement, and the Victorian Government for funding this $1M project through their Our Catchments, Our Communities initiative.

Learn more about the project here.