2023 is a big year for EstuaryWatch (EW) and WaterWatch (WW) Victoria.

For 30 years WaterWatch has been helping people get in touch with nature and make a difference for their local waterway.

It’s hard to believe that WaterWatch (WW) has been around for 30 years, it all began in 1993. Even more amazing that some of the WaterWatch monitoring groups in the Merri Creek and Darebin Creek catchments have been continuously monthly monitoring for over 15 years! Huge appreciation and congratulations must go to all the hard working volunteers consistently collecting and testing our local waterways to keep a close eye on their ecological health, as well as educating the community and advocating for change for our already stressed urban waterways.

On Friday 24 March, North Central Catchment Management Authority (CMA) held an afternoon awards event to congratulate and thank WW & EW volunteers from all around the State of Victoria. It was amazing to hear that some groups have been monitoring their local waterway for over 25 years! This easily accessible water quality data helps everyone to understand trends in seasons and parameters, as well as track the impacts of climate change.

3 WW groups from MCMC WW were awarded outstanding service awards. They are:

• Friends of Merri Creek Stream Team
• Reservoir Frogs WW group
• Westgate Park WW group

Two members from each group were able to join the WW Coordinator Julia Cirillo at the awards ceremony. Pictured are (from left) Denise Ryan, Amy Dobie, Jonathan Bones, Melissa Laing, Julia Cirillo and Teresa Aquino.

Two groups were able to stay for the evening awards ceremony and hear from guest speakers involved in citizen science monitoring projects from around the State.

Big thanks to the Victorian Government for making it possible for our WW volunteers to attend this event (including hotel stays and buffet breakfast!) and to North Central CMA for hosting this event at the beautiful St Anne’s vineyard in Bendigo.

MCMC WaterWatch held workshops for our volunteers in Autumn 2023 to revise and increase volunteers' skills and understanding of water quality testing, biological monitoring and assessment waterway ecological health. 

The suite of free workshops included:

• Interpreting Waterwatch data and entering it on the website;
• Training for new monitors and those requiring a refresher;
• Shadow sampling
• Waterbug census on Edgars Creek with Friends of Edwardes Lake;
• Waterbug census on Merri Creek, Coburg.

More information is available on the WaterWatch Community Portal. Thanks to Melbourne Water and the Cities of Darebin and Merri-bek which funded the workshops.

Along with 15 other organisations MCMC contributed funds to reprint the Natural Temperate Grassland Species of the Victorian Volcanic Plain brochure. This brochure illustrates many plants and some animals of our native grasslands and was produced by the Grassy Plains Network. You can now download the brochure here or contact us for a sturdy, laminated copy.

MCMC advocates for leadership beyond kindergarten settings, paricularly on connecting with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Our activities have included: 

- In 2022, joining with Barry Beckett Children's Centre at the Yaruk'ho Wilam wetlands in Coburg for a film by the Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority (VCAA). The VCAA are responsible for creating curriculum across schools and early childhood centres in Victoria.
- Also in 2022, supporting the Keele St Kindergarten Collingwood. This kindergarten won the Victorian Government’s Early Years Excellence in Educational Leadership Award for their Yarra Bend Bush Kinder program. Congratulations!
- Hosting hosted a well-attended educational webinar for early years educators in February 2023, funded by the City of Whittlesea.

In February 2023, rakali activity was reporting at dusk in the Preston-Coburg reach of Merri Creek. A busy rakali was observed busy foraging, swimming, diving, and nibbling. Rakali have also been regularly spotted at Coburg Lake.

How to tell the difference between rakali and platypus

1. Rakali are typically similar in size to small platypus and have brownish colouring and furry skin in common. However rakali has a long, skinny, white-tipped tail compared to a platypus' paddle-like shaped tail. Also, platypus have a very wide, flattish bill, while rakali have a pointy shaped face. 
2. The ripples formed on the water surface by submerged rakali differ from diving birds and platypus, as their swimming and diving movements are subtly different. 
   More spotting tips here. 

We have over 20 year’s experience working with school communities to guide the development of indigenous gardens. This includes support for funding applications, tips for plant lists and delivery of appropriate learning involvement for students of every age. 

In February 2023, Marymede Catholic College in South Morang created a pop-up outdoor classroom in their garden which was planted in 2022. It's a great place to develop more awareness of indigenous habitat and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.  
For help with your own plan, contact us:

As non-Indigenous educators, respectfully teaching Indigenous perspectives is challenging and always evolving. After MCMC’s education specialists provide school incursions that connect with Indigenous perspectives, we sometimes see educators build on the experience and develop their own initiatives. Our congratulations to Carlton Primary School’s Kaytlin Beattie and Winter Dunstone who developed their teaching of Indigenous perspectives by using the school’s indigenous garden to connect with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung language and enrich an understanding of the seasons.

The image (right) shows an example of how Grade 1 students departed from the common, stereotypical seasonal ideas associated with ‘summer’. Instead of using a blue palette of skies and beaches, they used yellow, gold and brown, which is more attuned to the local conditions of ‘biderap,’ the hot and dry season – as conveyed by the grasslands of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. 

Please contact our specialist educators via   to discuss opportunities for professional development, incursions and excursions.

MCMC's Rapid Response to Litter after Rainfall (RRLC) has produced a Litter Report that sums up our efforts in 2022. 747 participants at 71 events collected 94,418 pieces of litter. This litter was overwhelmingly made up of plastics – single use plastic bags and plastic food packaging.   

The RRLC program, which began in 2018 thanks to a grant from the Port Phillip Bay Fund, supports local community to safely remove litter from the waterways of Merri Creek. It has enabled expansion of the litter clean-up program run successfully for over 20 years by Friends of Merri Creek.

Long awaited Woi-wurrung names for two Merri Creek grasslands managed by Parks Victoria were formally gazetted on 22 December 2022. This is 16 years after Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder, Aunty Doreen Garvey-Wandin, provided a series of innovative names for Merri Creek grasslands, based on body parts of the mother kangaroo, at the request of the Friends of Merri Creek.

The newly gazetted names are: galgi ngarrk (backbone) for the Craigieburn Grassland Nature Conservation Reserve and bababi marning (mother’s hand) for Cooper St Grassland NCR. The name marram baba (body of the mother kangaroo) has also been adopted for the proposed parklands that extend along Merri Creek from the Ring Rd to Beveridge. The use of lower case for the first letter in the names is a Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung preference and has been accepted by Geographic Names Victoria.

Other names in the original series, submitted many years ago, were approved using conventional capitalisation: Bababi Djinanang (mother’s foot) for Jukes Rd Grassland in Fawkner; and Ngarri-djarrang (thigh) for Central Creek Grassland in Reservoir.

David Turnbull, who served as the City of Whittlesea's representative on Merri Creek Management Committee from 2001 to 2011, including as Vice President from 2007-09, was awarded a posthumous Order of Australia in January 2023 for his service to local government administration. We are pleased to acknowledge his long-term support for MCMC as one of his achievements. David's most recent appoinments were as CEO of Whittlesea City Council 2007-15 and CEO of Mitchell Shire Council 2016-20. He died  in 2020. RMIT University awards The David Turnbull Memorial Prize in his honour.