Ted has lived in the Candelo area all his life. He spent most of his working life in dairy farming and at Bega Cheese and now lives at ‘Carolina’, on the Bega River between Candelo and Bega, at Kanoona Rocks. Ted and his wife Gwen bought ‘Carolina’ in 1963 when it was subdivided from the larger dairy property ‘Kanoona’. They moved to ‘Carolina’ with their family in 1975. Since then Ted has run a small scale beef cattle operation. Earlier this year Ted decided to undertake a river rehabilitation project along the one kilometre stretch of Bega River which runs the full length of his property.
Ted had watched the erosion of his river flats over successive flood events. The river banks were prone to erosion from stock movement and limited trees and shrubs holding banks in place.
Shannon and Ted
Ted worked on a rehabilitation plan with Shannon Brennan, River Rehabilitation Officer for the Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (SRCMA). They agreed to fence off the riverbank to manage stock access, creating a two hectare planting site for 1200 native trees, shrubs and grasses. These were planted along the floodplain, including the bank face and the toe of the bank. Two stock watering points were designed at gently sloping parts of the bank where erosion risk was identified as minimal.
The plants included species from the Bega Dry Grass Forest community, including Forest redgum, River peppermint, Ribbon gum, Apple gum, Swamp gum, four species of wattle, tea-trees, bottlebrush, native dogwood, sedges, rushes and grasses.
Biodiversity and bank stability will be improved over approximately 15 hectares as a result of Ted’s project. This includes not only the planting site but also 13 hectares of the Bega River channel where stock access in the river will be managed through occasional grazing to control weeds.
The project will also contribute to improved fish habitat through shading of the large remnant pools along this reach of the Bega River. These pools provide important areas of fish refuge during times of low flow.
For more information about the Bega River Rehabilitation Project, contact Shannon Brennan at Local Land Services on 02 6491 8223, shannon.brennan@lls.nsw.gov.au
