Our spring walks program this year was organised in partnership with Canterbury-Bankstown Council as part of their Nature Fest 2025 program.
Both walks were held on unusually warm days. One on 12 October and another on 8 November. Their was some cloud cover and the tree cover in the Wolli Valley helped to keep us a bit cooler.
The first walk was the full 5.5km from Bexley North to Tempe led by Tim and Ute with help from Lachlan from Council. The group saw two king parrots, near the quarry just before you get to Jackson Place.
The second walk was from Bardwell Park to Tempe is 3.5km and was led by Gina and Rose with help from Grace from Council. This group saw some grey-headed flying fox pups in the bat camp which had a lot of residents on this occasion.
Its such a pleasure showing new people our bushland. People are always amazed at this bushland so close to our city. We shared stories about the fight to save the valley as well as information about our plant life and our grey headed flying fox colony.
HELP WITH PRIZES NEEDED Our WCPS Annual Dinner is coming up soon and we need prizes to help us fundraise for our work in looking after the valley.
Would you like to help the Society and donate a fab prize for the raffle and silent auction? Run a local business? What about free vouchers? Garden produce? Books or items with an environmental theme?
Please contact Jakki on jtrenbath@wollicreek.org.au See our other posts for more details on the Annual Dinner.
Bookings are now open for the 36th Annual Dinner to be held at the Bardwell Valley Golf Club, 2A Hillcrest Ave, Bardwell Park on Thursday 16 October. Join us from 6:30pm and enjoy some refreshments as the sun sets overlooking Bardwell Valley followed by dinner and guest speaker.
Book your ticket now. For catering purposes bookings for this event will close on Sunday 6 October.
Our guest speaker this year is Taylor Coyne who is a PhD Candidate and Critical Design Theorist at UNSW Sydney, specialising in urban, historical geography. His topic is Badlands: Swamps, Stormwater, and the Struggles of Urban Nature
Taylor says that places like Wolli Creek have been historically and culturally constructed as Badlands – undesirable, messy, marginal. This label isn’t just descriptive; it’s political. It reflects how power, value, and legitimacy are assigned to lands and waters, and who is involved in decision-making processes. The idea of a “badland” becomes a lens through which to unpack the history of Sydney’s swamp drainage, the silencing of Indigenous landscapes, the ongoing politics of stormwater infrastructure, and the everyday resistance of communities, wildlife, and water itself.
There will also be a multi-prize raffle, a silent auction and a quiz. Don’t forget to bring your cash to purchase raffle tickets as we have limited card facilities. Any donations for the raffle would be appreciated, eg bottles of wine, chocolates, any indulgence really, home-made or home-grown items, seedlings or handmade craft items. Please contact us at info@wollicreek.org.au.
The dinner will start from 6:30 pm, with drinks available from the cash bar. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten free diets are catered for in the menu. Tickets are $75 each.
In spite of threatening rain during the day, the weather turned in favour of our annual Bat Watch Picnic in Turrella Reserve, even providing a nice fresh breeze for kite-flying. Up to 400 people came on the night to enjoy the park and celebrate the bats that live in our Valley.
bat picnic
Thanks everyone for a wonderful Bat Watch evening – especially our lovely volunteers. So many people were kept very busy making kites, painting faces, reciting poetry and much much more. The members of the Bat Picnic Committee said, “The face painting and kites were very busy as always and I don’t think those volunteers got much of a break; sorry. The masks and egg carton bats were also popular, and we think all the small people left with one of each.
face painting volunteers
The new play equipment drew more families early on, and the playground was busy all evening. Sadly, the new composting toilets were not such a success with such high numbers of people.
Thanks to Maggie again for crafting the bat capes. There was a crowd of expectant faces around the information stall at raffle time. Unfortunately, only nine people went away as winners. If you find a broken black umbrella on your travels through the year, please think of the picnic and save it for us.”
A highlight of the evening was the big cheer from children in the crowd when the first of the Flying-foxes started their fly out. Everyone stopped to watch. Very exciting!
A decade after it was saved from Westconnex, I recently visited the Johnston Street bushcare site and was amazed at how much work the bushcare team has done there. No longer choked by weeds, substantial areas of regenerating bush now look so open and beautiful. Wrens flit through bushes in dappled light and many turns of the track reveal another open view.
The walking track through the western end of the Regional Park leads from Johnston Street through bushland forest to the western park entrance on Bexley Road. This area was the site of one of the very first bushcare grants that the Society received, in the mid 1990s. Careful removal of vines and weeds in places revealed some brilliant bushland underneath and WCPS knew straight away it was worth saving.
Bushcare Coordinator Paul Ibbetson says,
“We have worked hard to open up the dense weedy canopy, vines and asparagus fern to let light in and encourage regeneration. Native plants do better in open, dry, sunny conditions. It’s a lot of work to manage and control the weeds. The bush does not come back by itself. We are very proud of our small team’s results. But we would love some more willing volunteers in our Wednesday morning sessions.”
Contact bushcare@wollicreek.org.au if you are interested in helping the team
Deb hugs tree 2012
Bushcare team member Deb Little says,
“We’re glad we campaigned so hard to save this bushland from Westconnex in the early 2010s. We were at risk of losing several hectares of native forest to a ‘cut and cover’ motorway tunnel. ”
Treemendous 2014Westconnex Protest 2015
As part of the Society’s protests, Deb organised several National Tree Day events to celebrate this bushland and highlight the threat of Westconnex. Many people participated in her ‘Hug a Tree Day’ in 2012, ‘Inspired by Wolli’ in 2013 and ‘Tree-mendous Wolli’ in 2014.
“This area was farmed, you can see remains of stone fences and terracing, so the bush was very disturbed, trashed in fact. It’s remarkable how much it has recovered. We are now seeing nice patches of native ferns and orchids and even the formerly very rare Cabbage Tree Palms are coming back. We’ve seen Eastern Yellow Robins and a Tawny Frogmouth too.”
The Wolli Creek Preservation Society is conducting guided walks this Autumn as part of the Canterbury-Bankstown Councils We Love Our River events.
This is a great opportunity to come along and walk part of or the full length of the track in the Wolli Creek Regional Park at a leisurely pace. We have two walks scheduled. One is 3.5km from Bexley North to Turrella Reserve on the 23 March. The second one is 5km from Tempe to Bexley North on 13 April.
Our volunteer guides will share their knowledge of this bushland, its cultural and environmental history, as well as information about the current issues facing the Wolli Valley and the bush regeneration (Bushcare) work the Society is undertaking.
This walk is sponsored by the Canterbury-Bankstown Councils We Love Our Rivers program
Bookings are essential. For further information and bookings see our Upcoming Events page.
Share this ‘wow’ experience with friends and family: • Celebrate our amazing city wildlife. • Enjoy creative and crafty batty activities for young and old. • Wear or bring something bat-themed. • Learn about bats: fascinating long-distance pollinators, vital for our forests. • Bring a picnic, add a rug or chair. • (Don’t forget insect repellent.)
Organised by The Wolli Creek Preservation Society with support from The National Parks & Wildlife Service, Canterbury-Bankstown Council, and the Australasian Bat Society.
The Bat Picnic is on again in 2025. This is a great family event, and an opportunity to see one of the great ‘urban David Attenborough moments’, as thousands of Grey-headed Flying-foxes stream out from their roosting camp beside Wolli Creek. It is an opportunity to enjoy an early evening picnic with family and friends, and to view and learn more about these fascinating endangered native mammals.
Join us from 6pm at Turrella Reserve. No need to book. Just bring your picnic and your family and friends.
The WCPS Annual Dinner last night at the Bardwell Valley Golf Club was MC-ed by the excellent team of Kate Flannery and Thor Blomfield, long-time members who kept the evening on track and made it fun. About 80 members and friends enjoyed a terrific meal and a hotly-contested quiz, raffle and silent auction.
President Chris Jordens reflected on our achievements in the last year, particularly that the State Labor government finally committed $13 million to fulfill its promise to complete the Wolli Creek Regional Park. He reminded us that it was thanks to the Society’s campaigning and dogged persistence for 25 years. “In nature conservation, you have to play the long game.”
A highlight of the evening was speaker Matthew Huan, from the Chau Chak Wing Museum, who shared his passion for butterflies and their behaviour. He enthralled us with stories of the Orchard Swallowtail, Black Jezebel and Blue Triangle, among many others. He said, “Thanks to you, animals still have this bushland to call home. The greatest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Thanks to the many people who did their bit to make sure the evening was another great success, particularly the organisers Julie Deady and Gina Svolos. Thank you so much everyone for a great night!
As a resident of Earlwood, living above Turrella Reserve, I feel very fortunate to live so close to the bushland of the Wolli Creek Regional Park. At TAFE in 2023, I created a large three-part drawing that features the cheeky birds who visit my home and also maps the narrow ribbon of bushland that helps local wildlife survive amidst the housing and development of ‘our hood’.
Starting on Monday 26 August, the library will be displaying this work for a month, including during Native Plant Giveaway Week. Earlwood Library, on the corner of William and Homer Streets, is only a ten minute walk from the bushland at Girrahween Park. So, if you get a chance, pop down and have a look at my drawing of our neighbourhood, and maybe go for a walk in the bush as well.
