This year, we say a heartfelt thank you to Irene for an incredible 20 years of dedication to the Waterwatch program and Streamteam. Since joining in 2003, Irene has been a driving force in community water monitoring, bringing her expertise, enthusiasm, and passion for our waterways to every session. See a short interview below.
How long you’ve been a Stream team member: I joined Stream team when it was first created in 2003 by another enthusiast (I think CHris was his name), I became the Streamteam coordinator about Jan 2005 when Chris moved on and have been mostly of the time since (apart from when I was overseas for 2019 when Trevor kindly took care of the role). Trevor and I have shared it since then until now, when I realised I needed to take a break since I am often not in town when the monthly sessions are scheduled. ,
A bit about your knowledge and experience you brought to the role: since year 12 I have been fascinated by chemistry and am a tertiary qualified chemist, but for much longer – all my life I have loved being outdoors in the environment and especially around water and have always found water bugs, all bugs in fact, captivating.
Why you decided to begin Waterwatch: when I moved into the Coburg north area in 2000 – one of the main attractions to me was it was a place in the city where I could walk along the linear creek corridors for as long as I liked enjoying the “country bush like” surroundings and it wasn’t long before I joined Friends of Merri Creek with a desire to “give back” to the creeks that gave me so much nurture. I remember contacting Ray Radford the secretary of FoMC in 2003 to offer my time to do waterwatch. I was a bit overly confident that my chemistry knowledge would make me able to provide useful assistance. Ray patiently let me know I would need some training but that would be provided!!!
What has kept you there: Many things have kept me very happily in the role and doing monthly water testing for these 20 years, fascination with the growing data, interest that the waterbug types and frequency are still changing- we didn’t see any crabs at the St Georges Road site until 2020 – now we see them almost every month! Sadly we haven’t seen a mayfly larva there for almost the same time! Probably one of the main things for me is the friends made through mutual love of the creek and all the interesting conversations had. There is also the hope that the data generated will support improved water and environmental management strategies to be implemented in urban developments in the future through water sensitive urban design.
Worst experience? Sheltering from rain and sitting under the St Georges Road Bridge among the pigeon poo to complete the testing!
Best experience? The joy on peoples faces when they first see all the amazing life in the creek water samples in our sorting trays.
Learnings? It takes a very long time to answer the simple question – is the water quality getting better?
Improvements needed for the volunteer experience? I think it’s pretty good in general as it is – we have had so many people that have ended up staying with the group for year!!! It is great when Melissa brings a table for the monitoring, perhaps we should invest in a light weight foldable table that is easy to keep with the rest of the equipment so we’re not reliant on mel! I think more visibility and discussion of the data generated would be helpful in some instances – we used to create graphs in our excel spreadsheet but don’t do this regularly anymore (my bad!!) I think it would help sometimes when questions come up about data trends to be able to bring up a chart to talk to….. (again my bad – if I retire and get into it again this would be something I would try to do!!), and development of an easy way to view it from the FoMC website maybe…. if this doesn’t already exist. I was also always interested to know more about other data produced by other groups along the creek – but somehow never got around to really getting down into the weeds on this… again maybe when I retire!!.
Irene, we are immensely grateful for your commitment, wisdom, and camaraderie over the past two decades. Your passion for our waterways has inspired so many, and your contributions will leave a lasting impact. Thank you!
