Volunteers

Hurstville Museum & Gallery

During 2020/21, Hurstville Museum & Gallery was supported by 10 volunteers. These volunteer invigilators assist with monitoring the exhibition spaces, ensuring artworks and installations are not touched or photographed as indicated, providing assistance with interactive installations and interacting in a warm and friendly manner with our visitors.

Hurstville Museum & Gallery hosted an intern from the University of Sydney who assisted with researching and cataloguing donated items that were related to the wartime history of the St George region. This project provided an opportunity for the student to gain experience in object handling, providing preventative conservation, object research and documentation as well as gain insight into the day-to-day workings of a busy community museum and gallery.

Bushcare

Our bushcare volunteers help manage the LGA’s remnant bushland by mitigating the effects of vegetation fragmentation, urban run-off, invasion of garden species and invasive weeds (such as Lantana and Privet), vandalism (including tree poisoning and rubbish dumping) and pest animals.

In 2020/21, we supported 391 volunteer sessions across 16 static sites and two responsive groups (Nomad and Rover Groups) that service an extra 10 sites combined. The volunteers established an additional 3,966 plants including a mix of trees, shrubs and ground cover species, to improve biodiversity and habitat at their sites.

Bushcare received five grants totalling $89,414 from the Australian and NSW governments to implement restoration and bush regeneration projects at various reserves in the LGA. The grants include:

• $20,000 – Restoration and rehabilitation of Gannons

Park, Peakhurst. Funded by Environmental Trust.

This is the final year of a three-year grant. • $27,255 – Weed control at Oatley Park. Funded by

Crown Land Improvement Fund Program. • $22,727 – Weed control at Bald Face Point Reserve.

Funded by Crown Land Improvement Fund Program • $18,182 – Weed control at Oatley Point Reserve.

Funded by Crown Land Improvement Fund Program. • $1,250 – Biosecurity weeds staff development.

Funded by NSW Weed Action Program. We saw a great turn out in volunteer numbers at regular bushcare locations and at events, including 44 new volunteers who joined in 2020/21. The volunteers contributed 5,157 hours at bushcare sites across the LGA. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, the bushcare volunteer program was still very successful.

• bushcare volunteers = 1,751 people • volunteer hours = 5,196 • volunteer sessions = 391 • new volunteers = 44 people • number of bushcare events = 12

Special events volunteer numbers:

• Clean Up Australia Day – 65 people • National Tree Day (Riverwood Park) – 4 people (impacted by COVID-19 restrictions in July 2020) • Scout group (ages 5-10 years) - 58 people at three events • Padstow TAFE Horticulture students at Riverwood

Park - 50 people