What a day for a clean-up at Flinders! For a beach that several people thought was so clean we collected approx. 116 kgs of discarded chairs, concrete blocks, star pickets, old machinery, fishing tackle and even a surfboard amongst other garbage was collected by a tam of volunteers. The kids came to help, free Beach Hand Bins got filled and the Sea Shepherd rubbish bags were groaning with rubbish! Sea Shepherd, with a team of 15 collated all the rubbish that was collected on the beach and car park whilst Ocean Divers with a team of 12 divers cleaned up under the Flinders pier, collecting broken squid jigs, smashed bottles and meters and meters of tangled fishing line. By collecting all this we hopefully made sure our marine life is safer for another day.
The Flinders Community Association sponsored by Community Bank Balnarring & District Bendigo Bank made sure it was fun day with local artist Liz Walker coordinating an art competition for kids who were delighted with their prizes. They were joined by Josie Jones and a team of volunteers, music by Emmie Li Moylan, a Coffee Lux coffee cart, and a sausage sizzle sizzled by the Icebergers of Flinders…a unique team of early morning swimmers who head off at the crack of dawn for their early morning swim.
Josie’s map of Australia and Liz Walker’s ‘Last Supper’ made from collected rubbish were on display. The Mornington Council were represented by the CEO John Baker and local ward Councillor David Gill.
For three days prior to the Flinders Clean up our volunteers headed to three other beaches : PT Leo, Shoreham and Balnarring to hand out the Beach Hand Bins.
We were also so grateful to Buxtons Mornington Peninsula, Southern Skips and Flinders General Store for their generous sponsorship of this fun event
The Sea Shepherd Team
The Icebergers Girls with their rubbish!
Wonderful Liz Walker with her Art Installation – The Last Supper created from found rubbish
The Iceberger girls, Josie Jones OAM volunteers
The Beach Hand Bin display at the Flinders Foreshore
Look at it all….found at Flinders!
The team at Shoreham
Councillor David Gill at Shoreham
Local Volunteers Dave Lindner and Angela Conaghan with Josie at Pt Leo
The Ocean Divers team who cleaned up under the pier!
