Coastal Community Engagement – northern region

Mandurah and the Peel region offer the perfect lifestyle coastline. Beautiful sand beaches and rolling breakers provide ideal surfing waves and Tim’s Thicket, Melros, Florida, Falcon and Halls Head attract surfers from far and wide. With crystal clear waters and regular Indian Ocean swells, residents and tourists alike enjoy at times, perfect surfing conditions. Wave cut platforms, limestone outcrops and coastal reefs provide excellent diving opportunities for the keen underwater naturalist and spearfisher. Protected bays at Falcon and Halls Head, clean water and sparkling yellow sands with beach front amenities make for a unspoilt swimming environment for children and families. Variable coastline from gentle gradient beaches and sand dunes through to steep limestone cliffs and exposed reef provide Mandurah and the Peel region with a wide range of recreational opportunities. It is little wonder that this area of our coast is so popular!

Click here to see what’s been happening on our northern beaches

Chris Gibbs, Coastal Facilitator for the northern region shares his thoughts on what this project is all about…

“Volunteers are the ‘glue’ which hold this project together. Increasing volunteers is most often a product of supporting groups and attending events. By being there in the public eye, attending festivals with displays, travelling to schools with the Captain Coastcare and Dune Dude show, supporting community barbecues after planting days and organising coastal and educational cinemas, SWCC broadcasts the good news volunteering message.

Schools offer enormous potential for engaging volunteers because they are large institutions, with a large parent and community base. We support environmental champions in education and also offer the opportunity for individuals and families to walk the walk not just talk about it!”

‘How wide is the sky’ – this question gives some idea of the many and varied types of events facilitated as part of this project. Events can be on-ground including planting and brushing eroded and degraded dunes, marine debris clean-ups, mapping tracks and degraded areas, visiting schools, hosting displays and activities at fetes, festivals, fairs and fishing clinics.

Events also include sustainability celebrations, field excursions and bus trips for Coastcare groups to showcase and celebrate their projects, organising lecture tours, stakeholder workshops and public forums. Coastal events provide facilitators like Chris, with a unique opportunity to think and act creatively with a large palette of ideas on a never ending canvass of community engagement possibilities.

This is a creative and exciting project with great opportunities to bring people with big conservation and environmental hearts and goodwill, together for the coast.