New walking/bike track works for the Anderson’s Goldfields area.
How a few WCA members softened the design.
WCA Member John Hanson was down the street one day and spotted a notice in the IGA window advertising “proposed vegetation clearance works” so he called Council and determined that widening and sealing of the existing informal track running between Anderson’s Creek and the school and Goldfields Plaza was proposed. 
The Hansons rang fellow WCA member Doug Seymour who got hold of the plans and a joint, preliminary inspection with the engineers for the project was arranged.
Co-operative staff
The new path will be a 316m long, 2-2.5m wide sealed surface with low retaining walls built up to protect sensitive vegetation. The project is part of a City wide effort to link up recreational and service areas with an extension link down Taroona Avenue a future plan for this project.
There is always a balancing of issues in such designs and in this case the need to raise the subgrade to avoid cutting tree roots led to a decision to construct a considerable length of low retaining wall along the edge of the path, especially on the lower creek side.
There had been turnover of staff so the Environmental Officer who assessed the vegetation was not available to point out the indigenous understory plants and groundcover all these walls were avoiding. Walls with fences on top are expensive and detract from the naturalistic meandering appearance of the path. They cause cyclists to ride nearer the centre of the path to leave clearance to the fence.
It is encouraging to see Council for taking vegetation protection so seriously but Bev pointed out that all the grasses along the edge were weed species as were a number of understory shrubs. The WCA members marked up a set of drawings showing how much of the retaining wall could be replaced with gently sloping battered edges (planted with native grasses). There are a great many re-vegetation plantings along the route; where live plants cannot be avoided it is proposed to retain the retaining walls.
The WCA committee was kept informed along the way with email reports. Council’s new Environmental Assessment Officer, who must sign off on any change, was available for a second inspection. Every metre of the alignment was walked and marked up and revised drawings are being prepared. There is a bit of a rush on to get works started before Winter.
John, Bev and Doug hope this story will encourage the broader membership to take up a local issue, spreading the effort and increasing the depth of our consultation.