The bush sure feels dry, despite our wet winter, but it also looks like a huge Jackson Pollock painting, spattered with intense pinks (Indigofera australis), with deep purple dripping over the ground and up trees (Hardenbergia violacea) and bright yellow straw flowers everywhere.

Thinking about planting bamboo at your place? Please don’t. We had a great Landcare day ripping out three huge tractor loads of the stuff at Didi’s and Mark’s place. Our latest energetic young residents, Freda and Trent, turned a few loads into bee hotels, but needed an industrial scale chipper to turn the bulky waste into something useful: mulch.

The best part of Landcare meet ups is the cuppa afterwards, where we share ideas and make plans, this time to deal with our feral cat problem – we are collecting sightings (two tabbies so far) and buying a trap. Feral cats in Australia kill 1 billion mammals, 400 million birds and more than 600 million reptiles a year and that’s why we have to get them gone. We also plan to organise an event with dingo experts so we can work out the best way of engaging National Parks and Wildlife, who think dingoes might somehow just know that the baits put out for foxes and wild dogs are not for them.

We were intrigued to learn about Intrepid Landcare Teams, gangs of energetic young people keen to offer help – we could sure use some of them out at Diggies to deal with our weed problems.

Thanks to the fundraiser we did last year, the Dignams Creek Community Group is offering every household support to buy the excellent baits and traps supplied by the Cobargo Co-op at cost price. Get your stuff and send your receipts to Fiona, dear neighbours, for the amount that the Committee will soon send out when they have made a decision.

So that we can keep doing great stuff like this as a community, we will be organising a Christmas Market, selling treasures coughed up by our spring cleaning from our sheds and cupboards, all the great plants we are potting up, and some lovely puddings and presents to give away this year.

And what about the bloody bridge I hear you ask?! It’s open! This has been a textbook case of how to not undertake a project. Will the Eurobodalla and Bega Valley Shire Councils or the company learn any of the lessons? I doubt it. Will BVSC plant the 700+ trees within 15 kms of the bridge required under the plan? I doubt it. Will the creek recover from the vandalism and destruction of so many trees, not to mention the ferns older than me along the bank that we lost just last week? It will take a very long time. Are we all relieved and looking forward to the end of the noise as the company packs up? Verily and indeed.

Flick Ruby

Photos: The bridge is open (top), Diggies Landcare Group (bottom). Photos: Flick Ruby.

Note: this version of Diggin Diggies is updated and slightly different from the printed version.