Opportunities to volunteer with NGT

Opportunities to volunteer with NGT

Nature Glenelg Trust welcomes you or your group to be part of voluntary on-ground environmental action in the South East of SA or western Victoria:

Cross-border Community Nursery

If you care about the environment and would like to make a valuable contribution to the conservation of rare and threatened plants of our region, why not volunteer at our Community Nursery, located in the beautiful Vansittart Park, Mount Gambier?

Long-term volunteer Ryan pricking out seedlings at the Cross-border Community Nursery

Our Friends of the Cross-Border Community Nursery is a small but dedicated group who perform mixed and varied duties, including:

  • seed collecting excursions
  • seed drying and processing
  • seed viability testing
  • propagation trials
  • general nursery maintenance, including weeding, transplanting and pot washing

The nursery focusses on rare and endangered plants, supplying plants for eight native plant display gardens around the region and valuable revegetation projects across the South East and western Victoria. To learn more about the project visit the project page here.

The level of commitment required can be flexible to meet your needs, varying from occasional or one-off assistance, through to volunteering several days a week with us. Whether you have a background working with native plants, or are just looking for something hands-on and meaningful to to do with your time, we would love to hear from you!

To find out more, please contact our nursery co-ordinator Yvonne Riley by phone 0407 776 164, or by email.

Eaglehawk Waterhole monthly outings

Do you want to know what habitat restoration at the “whole of property” scale looks like in practice? Then volunteering a day a month in a beautiful spot at Eaglehawk Waterhole, NGT’s privately owned habitat restoration reserve near the Little Desert National Park and Bangham Conservation Park, might be just what you are looking for!

Cath Dickson helping with revegetation works at Eaglehawk Waterhole

You’ll get a taste of a wide range of activities including (but not limited to):

  • wildlife surveys (birds, insects, plants, etc.)
  • weed and vermin control
  • revegetation
  • general property maintenance
  • nature photography
  • plus lots more!

Best of all, you’ll get to witness nature up close through the seasons and be part of the recovery journey of this 1700 acre property as it transitions from being a working farm back to nature over the years ahead.

If you live in or near Mount Gambier, Penola or Naracoorte we can also offer you a lift. To find out more, please contact our property manager Bryan Haywood by phone 0427 001 853, or by email.

Community Wetland Restoration Trials

NGT is also actively looking for ways to help boost the profile, membership base and wider community interest in the region’s existing environmental community groups. Why? Well the answer is simple. Working at the local scale, these groups are the heart of soul of environmental action in our region and NGT is here to support these groups by giving them meaningful opportunities to also be part of new, science based on-ground projects.

Led by Nelson Coastcare, volunteers from community groups from everywhere between Portland and Mount Gambier helped construct the first phase restoration trial structure at Long Swamp, Discovery Bay Coastal Park.

So what does this approach look like?

Our partnership projects with the Hamilton Field Naturalists Club and Nelson Coastcare have led to wetland restoration trials in the Grampians National Park (plus two adjacent sites – Walker Swamp and Brady Swamp) and Discovery Bay Coastal Park respectively.

If your group has a project that you need a hand with getting underway, or if you are an individual or group that would like to help out during our next sandbagging event – we’d love to hear from you!

Please contact either Lachlan Farrington on 0401 208 717 or by email, or Mark Bachmann on 0421 97 8181 or by email.

Volunteer action making a real difference – the Walker Swamp sandbag crew

Mark Bachmann