Today will be allocated to a certain part of the river.
I think we’re going to be heading down to the lower reaches and
there’s a couple of incidents down there that we need to check up on.
But as part of the rest of the day we get in contact
with other departments to see if there’s any issues.
We check compliance issues with other vessels and we’ll also keep an eye on some
riverbank projects because that’s obviously what I do in my substantive position.
It’s still good, you know… it’s an opportunity for me to catch a riverside
perspective of those shoreline projects. My name’s Markus Nordstrom.
I work at the Swan River Trust as a project officer and I’ve been at the Trust for
over four years. I originally started out as a river park operations officer.
I did that for three years.
As a river park officer, I was located at Elm Street in Victoria Park.
So that was the location of the tree damage, was it? Yep!
OK. All right. And just so you know, there’s a significant
limb that’s fallen down on to the jetty at Tranby Reserve.
I don’t know if there’s any chance that you guys
can pick that up next time you’re out on a patrol.
Yeah, should be able to talk to the waterways boys and get that done this week.
Excellent. All right. Thanks for that. Great.
Hi, Sara. Hi, Markus. Just to let you know I’m heading to Success Hill later on today…
The bulk of my work at the Trust as a project officer is to work alongside foreshore
land managers and they include local governments and state agencies and working
alongside them, we’re able to implement foreshore stabilisation around the river, basically
mitigating any threats to environmental values, social, cultural, safety issues.
That’s the bulk of our work. We do that through
implementing projects around the river, some of them funded
by the Trust and other ones we provide advice for
local governments implementing their own projects.
A typical project for us would come through to
us from a particular local government authority.
From there I’ll do a lot of research into particular
designs or stabilisation techniques that they plan to use.
Originally this shoreline here was… it had completely failed.
There was an embankment that posed a bit of a safety risk.
The consultants drew up a design that included regrading or re-profiling the shoreline.
Then we installed erosion control matting,
brush mattressing in the intermediate zone and then rock toe
protection and that protects the shoreline from any
wind waves, any boat wake and also high tides.
It’s obviously been revegetated which has taken
off really well. And yes, so this has been a good
outcome for the city of Belmont and for the Swan
River Trust, obviously for the river as well.
If you take a look over this side here, this is a section that hasn’t been completed yet.
This is an area where there’s obviously a failed shoreline.
The original log pile walling has completely failed
and it’s got no resistance to that energy, that boat wake.
The qualifications I needed to get into the Swan River Trust as a
river park officer – I had a degree in environmental science from
Murdoch University but I also had three years of experience at the
Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority as a bushland restoration officer.
A critical part of stabilisation is revegetation.
It’s a bioengineering component so for an area like
this where you’ve got significant embankments,
you use the vegetation and the roots to basically bind the soil and hold it together.
As a project officer with the Swan River Trust I have to do
regular inspections of sites during the construction phase.
When I’m here, obviously I’ll be checking for adherence
to planning and designs but at the same time, one of my
key roles is to inspect the property and to make sure there
are no detrimental environmental effects taking place.
For example, ensuring that there’s no plumes entering into the river as part of
the construction and also making sure there’s no unexpected vegetation damage.
The design component – if it gets quite technical – we often seek advice from consultants,
coastal engineering consultants but we do fall back on our best management
practice which has been designed by engineers and that’s our bible, so to speak.
See, that’s a limb coming from there. Yeah.
These are all little holes and they’re all the way round.
I don’t know how structural it is now, how deep those boreholes go. Yeah.
If it’s just on that outer couple of centimetres then it’s probably fine but if
they go right to the core, it’s not going to take much, you know, to send it over.
Have they been having a few bonfires down here still?
One of the highlights of this job is seeing the outcomes to these projects.
You start off with, you know, a bit of foreshore that’s in poor condition,
and the outcome may end up being a stabilised foreshore which is ultimately
what we want but as well as that, we may get increased access for public.
We may get services, for example, you know, kayak launching ramps, fishing
platforms like we’ve got here at Success Hill. But yeah, even aesthetically,
you know, you have a look at some of these sites and they look
beautiful once they’re done and hopefully for years to come.