The boat, says the skipper, is perfectly made for this. He says it with confidence, as though the craft was designed to ferry environmental volunteers around the Hawkesbury River.
Of course, it wasn’t. It’s actually an oyster farming punt.
‘It’s about ten and a half foot wide and it’ll quite comfortably carry about five or six tonne,’ he says. ‘It’s flat bottom and it only takes about two and a half inches of water to float in. It’s got a 225 horse Honda on the back ‘cos our [oyster] leases are a long way away, and you need to get there pretty quick. We all have four-strokes now, they’re much more friendly on the river.’
When we first got off the boat and you were looking at this wall of groundcover weeds, particularly bidens and some other old garden succulents, I thought 'oh no, this is just going so far backwards!'.
The barge pulls up to the wharf, where about 20 volunteers are waiting. There is a selection of green plastic picnic chairs on board, sitting around the edge of the punt as if around a camp fire.
Rob Moxham, the owner and skipper of the boat says ‘g’day’ to them all as they load up a selection of eskies and boxes full of weeding gear.
‘There’s no road coming in here, we’ve got to come in here by water,’ he says. ‘We’ve got to watch the tides, and something that only needs a puddle of water to float in is the best thing to use.’
Moxham is a fourth generation oyster farmer and a man committed to living his life on the river.
‘People often say you must have some terrible days out on the river. You don’t really. I’d rather be going underneath the M1 than over the top of it.’
But participating in the Floating Landcare excursions also gives Moxham a different view of the river.
‘When you are here, rather than out there running around on the oyster leases you get a different perspective,’ he says.
‘You’re sitting here looking out instead of out there looking in. And you can see the problems of these invasive weeds and that more easily. It’s good to know that you’re trying to help and do something about them.’
‘[Oyster farmers have] got the tools and the knowledge of the tides to make it a bit easier for [the volunteers], so, you know, why wouldn’t you do it?’
The volunteers are a mixed group, all from within driving distance of the Hawkesbury River, and they’re revved up.
When the barge bottom hits sand at the site, they’re jumping up and lugging the gear off the boat, exclaiming out loud at the amount of weeds they can see.
It’s a small plot of land that they’re visiting today, within the Muogamarra Nature Reserve. The reserve is rarely open to the public and the part we’re in is only accessible by boat.
‘You can only get here by water and it’s not had a wharf since the ‘80s, so you can in fact only get here by water on a high tide in the right boat,’ says Tegan Burton from the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service.
‘When we first did land here, and it was because the local river community had brought it to our attention, it was just an absolute wall of old garden escapees. A wall of agave, big prickly agaves, and up in the background some lantana and some pampas that you could just see from the water.’
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There was previously a dwelling on site, but the house is long gone. All that is left is bits of rusting iron under dirt and undergrowth, and some retaining walls which scale the steep slope. However, those walls are in fact acting as a semi-effective weed barrier to the bush as well.
The last time Burton visited the site was about a year ago.
‘When we first got off the boat and you were looking at this wall of groundcover weeds, particularly bidens and some other old garden succulents, I thought “oh no, this is just going so far backwards!” But in fact, once we came up into the main part of the site where we’ve been doing all the planting, it’s actually growing really well,’ she said.
At first, some of the volunteers were disgruntled about having to leave the weed thickets of the shore for the seemingly healthy bushland to the rear of the site.
‘Basic bush regeneration principles is to work from the good bush to the bad,’ says Rebecca Mooy, Senior Land Services Officer with the Greater Sydney Local Land Services. ‘So what we want to do is save the areas where the bush is coming back really well, and just go and get the small isolated pockets of weeds, and then we want to move to the worse areas and try and extend the zone of natives back into where the weeds were.’
‘That’s why instead of going where we could see initially, hopping of the boat and just pulling out biden, we want to go back up into the area where we’ve previously done works and concentrate all our energy on the better areas and make sure we can get rid of the weeds out of there.’
Mooy says the site is well on its way to recovery.
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The volunteers are along for all sorts of reasons. For some, the motivation is ideological, but others are looking for a good day out. For Rob Moxham, the urge to clean up the catchment is more raw than in others.
‘The water is the lowest point of the bush and everything that goes on in the catchment area in the bush eventually ends up in the water,’ he says.
‘My livelihood as an oyster farmer depends on the water quality and that’s the biggest issue. I really like coming out with the volunteers, because most of them are a bit older and it really is encouraging to see people putting their time in to come out ... you get new people and you get the same people back and you build up a bit of relationship. It’s not just pulling out weeds; it’s a social thing for them. There’s no way in the world that I’d stop doing it, I think it’s great.’
Head outside and venture Off Track for a show about the great outdoors. Listen to the environment discussed by the people who live in and love it.