First Friends of Dandenong Creek

29/09/2026

🌿 Another fantastic corporate volunteer day along Dandenong Creek!
Last week, Mitch, Calen and Gael from First Friends of Dandenong Creek welcomed around 50 volunteers from Mentholatum for a great day out helping care for our local environment.

The team got stuck into a range of activities, including sugar glider surveys, w**d collection and rubbish clean-up — plenty of hands making a real difference across the creek corridor.

This is now the third year Mentholatum has joined us, and it’s always fantastic to see such a large group come back and give their time to support the work our volunteers do.

With beautiful weather, plenty of laughs and smiles all round, it was a terrific day.

A huge thank you to everyone from Mentholatum who came along, and to Mitch, Calen and Gael for helping make the day happen. 💚

24/09/2026

Check out this article about Platypus. FFDC would love to see platypus in the Dandenong Creek. You can still see them in the Yarra at Templestowe.

Conservationists are calling for government funding to count the population of the platypus over the next decade.

19/09/2026

🌳 More trees, more shade, a cooler Knox
Increasing tree canopy across Knox is one of the practical things we can do to create cooler streets, improve habitat and biodiversity, and make our neighbourhoods more resilient to a changing climate.

As volunteers, we see first-hand the difference that revegetation can make. Each year FFDC and other local Friends groups put thousands of indigenous plants into the ground across our reserves and waterways — but community revegetation is only one part of the picture.

Street trees and urban canopy are equally important, particularly in areas where shade and canopy cover are limited. The figures shared by Knox Climate Action Now are therefore worth considering as part of Knox Council’s current Climate Response Plan consultation.

We’d encourage our members and followers to have a look at the proposed plan and take the opportunity to provide feedback through Council’s Have Your Say process.

A greener Knox needs investment in our streets, parks, reserves and waterways — and a long-term commitment to growing our urban canopy. 🌿🌳

Is this what you expect from a Climate Response Plan intending to be 'ambitious'? 👎

Looks like a lack of budget & resources to accelerate the number of trees providing shade and urban cooling. ☀🥵

📣 Please complete the Have Your Say: street tree plantings need to accelerate, not continue at these low rates. 🌳🌳🌳🌳


Sources: Knox Council's Annual Reports & Budgets.

12/09/2026

A world-first trial on Phillip Island has found floating wetlands can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater lagoons.
Researchers say the nature-based solution could be retrofitted into existing lagoons.

A floating garden of native plants in Victoria's east cuts a wastewater lagoon's emissions by about 30 per cent, with researchers now testing the approach on farm dams.

11/09/2026

🏡 New homes for sugar gliders at Ringwood Golf Course! 🐾

We’re excited to see another part of our sugar glider project getting underway, with six new nesting boxes soon to be installed at Ringwood Golf Course.

The boxes have been funded through a generous grant from Bendigo Bank and will be installed by the team at the golf course, helping to provide additional nesting habitat for sugar gliders in the area.

Once installed, members of the FFDC team will regularly survey the boxes over the coming months. This will help us learn more about sugar glider activity in the area while also providing valuable habitat for these wonderful little locals.

Pictured is Scott Irving from Ringwood Golf and FFDC President Anthony Bigelow checking out two of the new nesting boxes at Ringwood Golf Course.

A big thank you to Community Bank Ringwood East and Croydon for supporting the project, and to Ringwood Golf course team for working with us to make it happen.

We’re looking forward to getting the boxes up — and hopefully finding some new residents in the months ahead! 🌿

Maroondah City Council

09/09/2026

🌿 A fantastic day on the creek with the ENGIE team! 🌿
We recently welcomed 15 keen members of the ENGIE team for a corporate volunteering day with First Friends of Dandenong Creek — and they certainly got stuck into it!

Across the day, the team tackled a great mix of activities, including removing w**ds from our revegetation areas, collecting rubbish, helping with our sugar glider citizen science survey work, and planting more than 100 indigenous tubestock. 🌱🐿️

It was a great opportunity to not only get some important work done along the creek corridor, but also to share some of the work FFDC does to restore habitat and better understand the wildlife that calls the Dandenong Creek corridor home.

A huge thank you to our FFDC volunteers Gael, Caleb, Mitch, John and Isharna, who gave their time to help us run the day, share their knowledge and keep everyone well looked after — including morning tea and lunch!

And of course, thank you to the Engie team for bringing such great enthusiasm and energy to the day.

Finally, thanks again to Landcare Australia for organising and supporting the day and helping connect corporate teams with hands-on environmental volunteering opportunities.

A terrific day of practical action, learning and teamwork along Dandenong Creek. 💚
ENGIE AU

06/09/2026

🌱 Another 3,000 plants in the ground at Koomba Park! 🌱

What a fantastic way to round out our 2026 community planting season!

A couple of weeks ago, more than 45 volunteers came together at the Goat revegetation site in Koomba Park, where First Friends of Dandenong Creek and Friends of Dandenong Valley Parklands have been working in partnership over several years to restore this part of the Dandenong Creek corridor.

It was a beautiful day and, despite some very boggy ground in places, everyone got stuck in and helped us put another 3,000 indigenous tubestock into the ground — followed, of course, by a well-earned BBQ!

The revegetation at the Goat site is looking fantastic. After several years of work, it's really rewarding to see the vegetation becoming established and each new planting complementing what's already there.

A HUGE thank you to the Bliss and Wisdom Society and their members, who came along in droves to support the planting. The number of people who turned up and got stuck in made an enormous difference on the day. 💚

And those 3,000 plants also bring us to a pretty special milestone — 10,000 tubestock planted through our community planting events along the Dandenong Creek corridor this year.

That's 10,000 more plants helping create habitat, improve biodiversity and strengthen the creek corridor for the future — something that simply wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our volunteers, community and partners.

Thank you to everyone who has planted alongside us this year. 🌿

10,000 plants. Thousands of holes. Quite a few muddy boots. One healthier Dandenong Creek. 💚

31/08/2026

What a clean-up! 🌿

Chris led another fantastic FFDC clean-up at Bateman Street on Sunday, joined by nine volunteers who managed to remove an enormous amount of dumped rubbish from the area – scrap metal, corrugated iron, a tyre and all sorts of other debris... including the kitchen sink! 😄

A huge thank you to Chris and everyone who gave up their Sunday to help look after this important patch of bushland, and to Kylie for organising the rubbish collection with Knox City Council.

It’s amazing what a small team of volunteers can achieve in just a few hours. 💚

23/08/2026

A big thank you to Maroondah City Council for supplying our volunteers with some fantastic new vests! 💚🌿

They’ll certainly help keep our volunteers visible (and looking the part!) while we’re out working along the creek and across the local reserves.

We really appreciate Maroondah’s ongoing support of FFDC and the work our volunteers do to care for and improve our local environment.

Thank you, Maroondah! 🙌

12/07/2026

🌿 Thank You! 🌿 😍
What a wonderful morning along Colchester Road in Kilsyth South (albeit it somewhat chilly)! A huge thank you to the 45 volunteers who joined us today to plant 1,900 indigenous plants, helping to restore another section of this important bushland corridor.

With 1,900 plants to go in, we kept this as a smaller community planting and invited our members and friends to join us. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces, and we're incredibly grateful to have such a dedicated core community that continues to support these projects year after year.

A special thank you to the amazing Maroondah City Council Bushland Team for once again partnering with us. Your knowledge, planning and ongoing commitment to restoring our local bushland is greatly appreciated.

We're also incredibly grateful to our wonderful friends from The Bliss and Wisdom Society. Thank you for your continued enthusiasm, generosity and hard work—you always bring such a positive spirit to our planting days.

This is just the beginning of what will be a multi-year restoration project, and we're excited to watch this reserve grow and flourish over the coming years as each planting builds on the last. Every plant we put in today is another step towards healthier habitat for our local wildlife and a greener future for our community.

If you'd like to be part of projects like this, we'd love to welcome you as a member of First Friends of Dandenong Creek - see here https://www.ffdc.org.au/get-involved-1 Our members and friends are the heart of what we do, and are the first to hear about our smaller community plantings, working bees and other opportunities to get involved.☺️

Thank you once again to everyone who gave up their Sunday morning to make a real difference. We couldn't do it without you. 💚🌱

Bliss and Wisdom Foundation Australia Maroondah City Council