Many hands make light work — learn about volunteering options at NGT

Posted at 29 Apr 2025 at 10:08h in News, Community Nursery Project, NGT People, Volunteer by
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In the short updates below, we give you a taste of what volunteers can get up to at NGT…

NGT Community Nursery

The first few months of 2025 in the Mt Gambier Community Nursery have been busy!

Coordinator Ange and the regular nursery volunteers have been working hard sorting and sowing seeds, then pricking out into pots once they’ve emerged. The newly potted-up seedlings are rapidly growing with the recent warm weather. There’s also an abundance of edge-of-swamp plants that need to be pricked out, so they will be ready for the upcoming planting season.

We’re always looking for more volunteers, so if you’re based in the Mt Gambier area and have some time to spare, please get in touch with Jess at jess.bourchier@ngt.org.au.

Regular Friday volunteer Carol sorting seed
Regular Friday volunteers Jennie and Helen, sorting Acacia seed
Volunteers pricking out emerged seedlings into larger pots and trays
A sea of hard work from our volunteers
Still lots to do to get ready for the upcoming planing season

The nursery has also had a bit of a clean up, with volunteers removing the old shade cloth covering our fences and replacing it, as well as a general tidy up.

We’d like to give a huge thank you to regular volunteer Deb Thompson who was put in charge of the sewing the shade cloths. It was an amazing effort and it has made the nursery look like new again.

Volunteer Josh, helping Deb with the new shade cloth
Volunteers tidying the nursery ready for the new shade cloth

Sorting photos from camera traps

In other news, Bryan has been working with Nature Foundation SA to help with monitoring of their nature reserve near Kingston. They’ve had 20 remote motion sensor cameras set-up around the property to detect fauna.

Our first look at a couple of cameras has found a huge diversity, including the usual suspects such as rabbits, foxes and kangaroos, but we’ve also found echidna, butterflies, bearded dragons, stumpy lizards and a variety of birds.

We’ve had some help from volunteers looking through the abundance of photos from the 20 cameras. If you could spare a few hours looking through photos on a computer, we’d love your help to sort through some images. This could be done from any location, so please contact Jess at the email below if you’re interested. we’d love your help!

A selection of photos from the camera traps where fauna have been identified.

If you would like to get involved with either of these volunteering opportunities please get in contact with Jess by emailing jess.bourchier@ngt.org.au

Jess Bourchier