November has been a busy month for the Foreshore Cleanup Program along the Hawkesbury River and on November 29th Graham Johnston and the students and teachers from “The Croft” Special Education Unit headed out on the boats to the northern end of Patonga headland and over to Lion Island for a clean up event.
The goals for the day was to monitor and remove large and small litter items from the beaches and foreshore headland rocks from Patonga Jetty to lion Island and the students had plenty of marine debris to collect!
“Party” litter on the small beach east of the boat ramp was evident with plenty of alcohol bottles. Two full bags were removed from this site. Large items were removed from the headland including two truck tyres, marker buoys, boat decking fiberglass, deck chair, steel frames, oil containers, plastic bags and bottles, tin frames. Large items which could not be removed include a large wire fish trap and a large red mooring buoy. These are wedged between rocks.
Lion Island had abundant plastic and broken foam items, six full bags removed from the sandy beach. Two oyster “bags”, together with a car plastic bumber, and truck tyre removed. Two “dagger” kayaks were removed from the lantana. These appeared to have been on the Island for some time. National Parks Rangers were immediately contacted. The craft were removed, and are currently being stored in “The Croft’s” bulk storage container.
Flint and Steel Beach was also checked, however only small items were removed There is a large fishing trap on the grass above the beach which was too big for retrieval.
The Broken Bay Sport and Recreation beach was cleaned, with small plastic items and foam removed. Two bags filled. One large oyster tray 2m x 1m was also removed.
The rocks to the North of the Recreation Centre revealed a steel ironing board, which was removed.
The three tyres were deposited at Coastal Tyres for a $20 fee and eight bags emptied into the Gosford Council bins at the boat ramp, but the larger bulk items are currently stored in the coordinators trailer for future “off loading”.
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