Bushland friends create a home for native wildlife

Volunteers have spent many gatherings working on the regeneration of Prout Webb Road.

A quiet revolution is underway in Shoreham thanks to a group of local volunteers with a love for our open spaces and native wildlife.

Instead of an urban garden with carefully manicured edges, they’re creating a sanctuary for native wildlife that is contributing to what’s called the biolink that connects us all across Western Port Bay and the wider southern peninsula.

Regenerative works allow the native grasses and other endemic species to recover.

Since the Friends of Shoreham’s Bushland and Road Reserves group (also known as Bushland Friends) formed in 2016, it has helped the local koala, wallaby and echidna populations survive. Now, you’ll also see blue tongue lizards, frogs and insects returning.

On your walk around the village, you may have noted changes along the Nelson Street/Buxton Lane walking track with new plants and along the Howard Street walking track where a fern gully has appeared now that the volunteers have cleared out the blackberries.

Work on Byrnes Road includes the successful removal of pittosporum, radiata pine and blackberry which means that as you look from the Catholic Church, you can start to see across the hills towards Flinders.  

Volunteers have changed the Shoreham Reserve (once known as the Shoreham Common) from a car park and access track to what it is today-a shared parkland for everyone to enjoy.

You might also have noticed the tell tale sign of plant guards along Prout Webb Road where the volunteers are replacing invasive weeds with native plants.

Thanks to funding from the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, the private bushland management company Naturelinks has been helping Shoreham’s volunteers for many years.  

Now our Bushland Friends group has secured a second Melbourne Water Victorian Landcare grant to continue their work in the village.  

This year the Shoreham Community Association has raised more than $7,500 in a massively successful morning at Elgee Park in Dromana and in the sale of collectable Shoreham School 150th anniversary tea towels.

We are using those funds to help the ongoing weed eradication program on Byrnes Road with particular attention to the invasive karamu (coprosma robusta) along with the pesky agapanthus hidden beneath them. Once the area is clear, we are planning a community planting day!

We welcome your help and any contribution you may like to make to keeping Shoreham a special place we share together with our native wildlife.

Residents in Blake Street have begun weeding and replanting their roadside frontage. It would be great if others did the same!

The Bushland Friends group is also keen to have more volunteers when it starts gathering again next year.

For more information check the Events section of our website or contact Sue Boggan at sueboggan1@gmail.com.