On December 19, 2024, WRA hosted its end-of-year gathering at Leo’s Pizzeria, bringing together our dedicated community to celebrate our collective achievements in enhancing the Werribee River’s environment.
The evening provided an opportunity for staff, board members, volunteers, and supporters to connect, reflect, and recognize outstanding contributions. As part of the event, we proudly presented awards to honor exceptional volunteers who have made a meaningful impact throughout the year.
The follow awards were distributed:
ADVOCACY AWARD – Susanne Jenson
Susanne has been living in Werribee South for 25 years. She has been finding an astonishing amount of fishing line strewn around the jetty and beach area on her daily walks. She’s also found birds in her garden entangled in line. Susan turned her concern into action, and worked with the Association to have three new Seal the Loop Bins installed in her area.
Susanne also spent time putting up signage to direct people to the bins, and featured in our Wyndham Star Weekly story. She’s an amazing advocate for her local community and the incredible wildlife that calls the special part of the bay home.
CITIZEN SCIENTIST AWARD
Elijah Gadong is an Environmental Engineering student who has been helping collect monthly water samples as part of our 12-month Pesticide Watch citizen science program. The samples are collected from 3 drains in Werribee South, where the irrigation water from the market gardens flow to the river. They are sent to Deakin University to be tested for a range of pesticides. The program will allow us to see what’s coming off the farms and how it may be impacting the river, providing important data to justify funding for our revegetation and engagement work in the area. Elijah is instrumental in these monthly sample collections and in contributing to the research being conducted by Deakin University.
COMMITMENT TO COMMUNITY AWARD
Felicity Sicari for her volunteer support across both the local Love Our Street group in Point Cook, and our conservation programs – Friends of the lower Werribee River and Friends of Cobbledicks Ford.
Felicity’s generosity is evident by her bringing in home-made cakes and biscuits to our programs and stepping up to look at the Point Cook group when the other leaders were away.
HEALTHY WATERWAYS AWARD
Bill Armstrong is soon to be leading the reactivated Love Our Street 3029 group, and he is active with both litter and conservation programs. He supports the Association in many other ways too, ie. Bill is currently helping out with storing the work vehicle whilst we are in a handover period with our Regen Officer role.
JACK OF ALL TRADES AWARD
John Marks has a long running association with WRA. He is an active member of the board, a group leader for Friends of Cobbledicks Ford, and supports multiple litter blitz activities. Recently John stepped up again, and helped clean up the work ute and take it in for servicing and other mechanical appointments. John does go above and beyond the normal volunteering role; he’s a great advocate for the environment and the Association.
COMMUNICATOR AWARD
Aisling McGrath has been an absolute stalwart for the Werribee River Association, advocating for the organisation and our wonderful waterways through manning our information stalls at the Volunteer Expo, Wyndham Learning Festival and Children’s Picnic, to name a few. These are such important spaces for us to be seen and heard in, leading to hundreds of conversations over the day. It’s exhausting, repetitive work, but a real changemaker. How many times have we heard people’s surprise that “what, there are platypus in the Werribee?!”. Thank you to Aisling for her dedication, being able to say the same thing over and over again, but with such passion is a talent. We’d be at a loss without you!