Saving the earth, one tree at a time

On Saturday I volunteered with Conservation Volunteers Australia in a town called Ballarat, about an hour outside of Melbourne. Ballarat was a pretty sleepy town that has nice buildings from the gold rush that populated Australia (above). 100 years ago it sounds like it was a pretty hopping place, but now there is not much there.

I was working along a stretch of road (above) that had been cleared to construct the roads. As a result, the area had become really rocky (above), causing erosion. Also, koalas lost their habitat due to the clearing. So, our job was to plant trees. There was 7 of us from Conservation Volunteers and about 10 from a group in Ballarat.

We learned how to plant these little saplings. We were given these tools that were basically pogo sticks with a shovel at the bottom of them (above). To create the hole for the tree, I had to jump on the tool. This created a hole just large enough for the sapling to go in. Then, I had to protect the trees from weather and rabbits by hammering 3 stakes around the tree and placing a plastic sheet around them (above). Sounds easy enough, but it was a pretty rocky area so it was hard to find an area to put a tree on. I also had a mishap where I jumped on the tool, slipped, and fell forwards to have the foot platforms nail my hamstrings. It was pretty funny.

It was a fun day. I think I planted about 15 trees myself, which added to the hundreds that were already planted there (above). It was cool to see some trees that had been planted 3 years ago that were starting to mature (above). Hopefully someday my trees will be home to some koalas!